Curse My Mama?

Canadian Seth Rogen is a talented comedy actor. He's expanded to Director & Writer for the controversial film "The Interview" -- where a national leader is assassinated.

Concerted push-back & sabotage have led Sony Pictures to partly disavow the film. Complaints about the film were summarily dismissed, and the scandal is trumpeted as an attack on free speech.

But the movie seems in poor taste. I've not seen it - nor have I met Seth Rogen's parents. But imagine creating a funny skit of Seth's family attacked, including rape, murder, etc. Ho ho ho - fictional comedy? Terrible! -- why antagonize & dirty what people hold dear? Some 'artistic' acts are legal, but perpetrators may regret being coarse, crude and cruel, and profiting directly from causing distress to others.

Now those irritated by Rogen are fighting back. They use illegal tactics. They've scared many businesses with threats of desperate retaliation.

Seth's project was ill-conceived. Attacking religion, or family, or nation (or other areas held dear) is dumb & dangerous. Seth's an insensitive young Canadian businessman, too eager for dollars...

Should We Care?

Japan marches toward remilitarization.

The Abe government, underwritten by American militarists, drags Japan to chauvinistic bellicosity. Japan's right wing is happier than pigs in shit; the typical citizen is quietly skeptical.

Surely Chinese interests can subdue Japanese extremism?

Should non-Japanese people care? We're permanent outsiders, not welcome among decision-makers or the common folk.

But we do care - for lives wasted needlessly...

Militarists manipulate nation-states, for big money.

The people of Japan are scheduled (again) to suffer needlessly...

Christmas Haiku

Playing in the dirt
Young kids don't stink of evil
Palestinian!

Parasite Scoundrel
On lands owned for centuries...
Palestinian!

You are in the way...
Disappear or be bulldozed!
Peasant local folk.

We're led and deceived:
Just a child, playing at home
Terror Extremist

Moderates gave up
Subduing the crazies
Consenting to hate

Local people's rights
Displaced by squatter zealots
Burning rival kids.

                            -- by Genki

Goon Balloon

Raytheon and The US Army soon launch their Goon Balloon -- two giant spy blimps.

The massive goon balloon (officially JLENS) will continuously monitor America. The first two, tethered over Maryland, watch East Coast USA

 You'll never be lonely, thanks to Goon Balloon Eye in the Sky!

Blasé Abe

Japanese supporters of re-militarization are cheered by last week's victory of Shinzo Abe and the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Abe claims the election was a clear mandate of support for his (poor) administration.

But most disagree.  (link)

Hawaiians Betrayed

Hawaiians Betrayed
Forgetting how to 'shaka'
Barry turns his back.

Mulatto brother
Forgetting needs, and your friends
Texting from trouble

Alone in the night
Surrounded by Injustice
An unvoiced prayer

                -- Haiku by Genki

Filial Piety

Language directs our perception & activities (...how much?)

Is the word "filial piety" deliberately obscure?

For certain concepts, might we benefit from simpler & more straightforward English-language words?

entrepreneurialism
a long & unwieldy word...
Language entrepreneurs: Please coin a new word !

filial piety
WTF? could this be more obscure?
(Chinese: 孝顺 --- Japanese: 親孝行 --- Korean: 효행)

zeitgeist
I like the imagery; but not enough people know the word

meme
Coined somewhat recently; should be better-known

smartphone
I hate this word - Look at a "smartphone" two years old: it's obsolete & no longer smart (but still a 'smartphone') ... these tools have many functions ... one better term is "commby" (communications + by = short & cute)... New name needed! (generic, not a brandname)


< this list will be expanded >

Spying on Tourists?

Visitors to Japan often complain about lack of free wi-fi (see links to stories here & here). Most residents subscribe to paid nationwide access systems; wi-fi access for short-term visitors is poor, often nonexistent (pay-as-you-go SIM cards are also strictly controlled).

But major provider Wi2 will offer an app allowing "free" access.

One BIG caveat:
"Wi2 said the Travel Japan Wi-Fi app will also collect information on user habits, such as GPS records of their travels, so the activity can be analyzed and used to focus tourist marketing strategies." (link)

Will your data be properly used? Can they securely protect all your data, after tracking your movements and habits? Costly free wi-fi?
Bad...

Torturing Assholes

All the world should be outraged by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture (link here to executive summary -- full report remains secret).

Many torture horrors are admitted, generously labeled "abuses and countless mistakes" (p.2 in U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's foreword). It must be remembered government inflicted these torments on people prior to trial or conviction. Most captives were never legally tried, and some were tortured to death.

Surely government agents & outside contractors treated prisoners / captives / hostages with barbaric cruelty. This included (p.100) stripping the detainee, pushing their head down below their body, jamming a hose up their arse, and powering water into their guts -- the report's euphemism is "rectal rehydration as a means of behavior control"...

Oversight has been minimal and ineffective. The severity of American tortures, and the number tortured, is still wholly unknown.

Highlighting detainees subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA's Director ordered officials to keep the count at 98 (report p. 476) -- so any "true" torture count is horribly tainted. But surely those mistreated, including our own armed forces, number in the millions.

Wartime diaries can supply great insights into warfare - and (link) recent beatings, muggings, and torture by less-responsible American forces.

The result of all such brutality? America is feared, but justifiably hated around the world.

Who'll be thrown to the wolves? The outsourcing company formed & hired for interrogation billed the CIA over $81 million (see Findings & Conclusions, p.11 of 19). Such funds seem substantial for a limited partnership (Mitchell Jessen and Associates) but the two main American psychologists are now being dubbed "Torture Teachers" (see also "The American Mengeles: Drs. Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell").

Shareholders in Halliburton & Blackwater corporations gained billions in taxpayer monies. Even the cost of the Senate report was over US$40 million. Damage to U.S. reputation? Priceless. Remember the smirks of George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their henchmen? They beggared the USA. Imprison all these swindlers with their colleague Bernie Madoff !

U.S. involvement in the ongoing wars for the Middle East cannot be justified. Claims of "keeping us secure" are bullshit - top people at the policy level didn't & do not care if Joe America lives or starves to death. The rich got richer.

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

Secretive Nippon?

Japan creeps closer to uncontrolled fascism, as the new "Special Secrecy Law" -- 特定秘密の保護に関する法律 -- comes into effect from today.

The Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office has already begun review and purge of people suspected to be sympathetic to anything outside Japan (link). Japanese people who've studied or worked abroad are now under suspicion.

This year's Nobel Laureate Physics, Shuji Nakamura, was stripped of Japanese nationality on becoming a naturalized American (he's a Professor at UCal Santa Barbara in the USA). Is Japan's government embarrassed? Most news in Japan simply ignores the inconvenient truth.

(Nobel co-laureate for Physics Kasumi Amano's wife has been working this year in Russia. Do foreign contacts make her less-pure & suspect?)

The rot (?!) reaches to the very top. Japan's Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Princess Masako, were both sent overseas to study at Oxford University. Is such excellent background now a negative liability?

Surely something is rotten in Japan -- but it is short-sighted domestic xenophobia. Japan's politicians, sad & feeble, seek Remilitarization -- against the wishes of most of the population. Narrow-focused domestic politicians & bureaucrats are once again secretly able to drag the nation to fascism & ultimate destruction.

One loud winter yell
As darkness falls on Japan.
Yoshi goes to war...

Now under Official Suspicion for Non-Japanese Experience?

Crippling Business in Korea

Korean newspapers have recently been full of allegations of horrible pricing. Foreign auto parts can be expensive if bought in Korea (link). Even the yet-to-be-opened Ikea has been criticized with front-page news stories: some product prices may be higher in Korea than elsewhere.

Korea: Welcome to Capitalism!

This populist criticism is stupid, and a form of protectionism. Korea embarrasses itself. Foreign companies wanting to do business in Korea must recognize the discriminatory system. Kentucky Fried Chicken and Lone Star (link) have suffered from this xenophobia and foreigner-bashing.

Of course prices are different internationally. Companies typically seek to charge whatever they can get - and they price strategically. Some products are cheap. Others are expensive - Don't buy when you don't wish to pay...

Outside Korea, small dishes of kimchi, namul and banchan (반찬) cost money at Korean restaurants -- inside Korea, these side dishes are usually free - provided at no cost, and with generous refills.  Should restaurants worldwide be forced to give those foods away, because they're free in Korea? Does this mean Korean restaurant owners operating in Europe and the USA are evil and should be punished?  Surely not - pricing is a business decision. When a business operator asks too much, they cannot sell their products, and soon will need to close. Search for profit is the (only) reason foreigners launch commercial activities in difficult Korea. That's business.

Wake Up Korea !

Free veggies  (Korea only?)

Shameful Triumph Japan

Three Japanese-born researchers this week will receive the Nobel Prize for Physics, but one is now an American. Japan's government forced Dr. Shuji Nakamura to give up his Japanese nationality on becoming a naturalized US citizen.

Though news reports in Japan crow noisily about the three Japanese laureates, Prof. Nakamura is not Japanese, and in some sense is an OUTCAST. So sad, shortsighted and unnecessary!

One day Japan will recognize multiculturalism has many strengths, and global individuals will not need to give-up being Japanese. Japan today remains inward-looking, often xenophobic and racist... Nobel prizewinner Nakamura is American, no longer a son of Nippon. Fiction hides fact, even in Japanese science & technology.

War on Islamic States

Our War on Islam ?
Syria, Iraq, Iran
And whoever else!

Zionist soldiers
Or American Defence?
Got Hagel Fired.

Japan Goes Postal

Japan's Postal Service has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

The old dependable Japanese post office is dead. Now we suffer under Japan Post Holdings Co., Ltd. (日本郵政株式会社), a new and wholly government-owned administrative frankenstein.

Squadrons of robotic & obstructionist younger workers have been hired to reeducate the population on the authority and primacy of bureaucrats.

Japan is still rigid & semi-feudal. The population must regularly petition officials for all sorts of silly permissions, who then must stamp OK on every page. Such antics keep Japan uncompetitive.

Yesterday I was part of an uncomfortable group watching a worker individually weigh 94 business letters (all same weight & price). I've experienced bureaucracy in mailing a postcard. Japan's bureaucratic time-wasting need not account for itself.

These nutty officials are polite but firm - Just what Japan needs in its brutal drive to Remilitarize under Abenomics.

Stuffy officials handling people as dirt...
Wielding "Essential in Japan" permissions.

Fear - Gear - Profiteer!

Fear Gear Profiteer
Make-a-killing endless war
Industrial Schmucks

War Economies!
Obama Netanyahu
Can't Consider Peace ...

              by Genki

Japan's Blinded Citizenry

Many recognize efforts to restart Japan's atomic reactors as profit-motivated, even in the face of TEPCO Fukushima having run from disaster, abandoning many financial responsibilities. The Fukushima disaster leaves a NO-GO wasteland, a still-evacuated local population, and a continually poisoned ocean. Some elements of the food supply and environment are now highly toxic & deadly.

Japan's PM Shinzō "Sonny" Abe is a former Kobe Steel industrialist, whose grandfather was a major architect of World War II. Sonny seeks to re-militarize Japan.

How much do Japanese citizens know, and how much information is withheld from them? It's surprising that during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear explosion & meltdown, news footage in Japan was heavily censored. For many months, official channels covered-up the scale & horror of what happened because it was 'disturbing' -- people elsewhere in the world watched much more of the disasters live on television.

Japan's ultra-right (and corporate sponsors) now stifle discussion of Sonny Abe's attempts to remilitarize.

  大日本再軍 ? 
     Target Remilitarize Japan

Do Good

Our communities need energies & investment to prosper.

I believe communities cannot be responsible for each new arrival. Newcomers without resources are not society's responsibility. Sadly, the world has many homeless - but they've no right to demand entry to my home. If they sneak inside, they've no permit to stay.

US Immigration is not broken. Guests & intruders have no valid continuing business in the USA. People admitted temporarily can be sent away. A few positive stories about illegal visitors masks huge costs and corruption. The 'friendly' gate-crasher is not a legitimate resident, and has no right of abode.

aWARica

aWARica is a rogue nation savaging the world.

Don't be deceived. Genocide of local populations throughout the Americas... to Vietnam massacres... to ethnic cleansing of oil-rich regions:  aWARica kills & conquers.

Mickey Mouse & McDonalds are the soft side of waterboarding, torture, and civilian massacres.

Beware.

chelseamanning.org

Undeclared War

Few people recognize we're engulfed in undeclared war - on us.

Some would enslave us as passive & easily-manipulated consumers of their products & services. These creeps include:

•  richies wanting more
•  wannabe richies
•  richies protecting their wealth

Unfortunately, these scum own big media, and actively undermine & corrupt our public servants. Military serves them - not the 99% general population. War is Hell.

Net Neutrality Irks Censors

Big corporate bosses should not be censoring your internet access.

US broadband providers are part of huge conglomerates. These media business interests want to capture your home and your attention. If possible, they will decide what to feed you and they'll control what information you can receive.

Censorship Sucks.

Net Neutrality is the answer - treat the internet as a utility and don't allow businessmen to cutoff your services they dislike.

Because most media is owned by Big Business, news reports color this battle as contentious - it's not. This is a no-brainer: 99% of people don't want broadband providers fucking with their access. But media cultivates doubts, and deceives you. Bullshit about jobs and WWI-period legislation are smoke & mirrors. If your media is against net neutrality, you need better sources of real news: abandon that newspaper or TV channel; change now.

Militarist Money

Imperial Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama is requesting even more money -- $5.6 billion more -- to wage more war in Syria & Iraq.

Every extra military dollar spent is extra profit for somebody.
The money typically flows to politicial "friends"

Is it 2% ?
Or maybe it's 5% ?
But it's probably more than 15% ...
Some war material suppliers profit above 25%

Already The Pentagon bleeds America with "normal" military appropriations. Here's billion-dollar-chunks of 'extra' money:

$1,000,000,000.00   profits  $250,000,000
$1,000,000,000.00   profits  $250,000,000
$1,000,000,000.00   profits  $250,000,000
$1,000,000,000.00   profits  $250,000,000
$1,000,000,000.00   profits  $250,000,000
$   600,000,000.00   profits  $150,000,000

We spend & waste on war supplies, with no proper business in Syria or Iraq. What the fuck? - "teaching them" or "helping" some small elite is costly balderdash. We fight & beat ourselves in our increasingly pitiful "homeland" grubbing for welfare cheats or bad teachers, while Daddy Warbucks grabs hundreds of millions more windfall global profits. Choosing war leaves no money for local communities. Bring our military home !

[ even more money now ! ]      http://militaryindustrialcomplex.com

Kissass Puppets

Our puppet is a foreign family's dictator.

It's hard for most American families to make ends meet; prices always rising, jobs are scarce. Blame militarism - draining our nation as a giant leech.

Most people in military service are sacrificing and working - it's only a few elite masters getting fatter on the system. They control opinion and our money supply. They decide which of a dozen generals in the Republic of Upper Pauvre will rule & plunder the region. Their chump is always King.

A local sadsack politico is prescreened to control us.

EFF You

Time to shout out support for the EFF:
Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF defends civil liberties and champions user privacy, free expression & innovation.

For example, did you know many home printers & copy machines add forensic ID marks to every page?

Do you share your life with stingrays & ALPRs in total ignorance (link)?

Have you an idea how easily your own government & also foreign officials can track & spy on you? (and the corporations eager to sell such systems worldwide...)

Surely it's time to support the EFF: http://eff.org
Someone Must Watch the Watchers...

Obama's MESS

The Democratic Party, and overall government in the United States of America, are under corporate control, and poorly serve the American public.

It's a MESS:

Militarism
Espionage
Subservient
Secretive

Obama & cronies wasted their chances to create change:
America requires better leadership.

VOTE for real change.
We need better than subservient party dogs.

The American Stooge

Dozens of tinpot dictators, Kings, Emir, Presidents, Sultans and other scumbags owe their power to the USA. The American military's in the business of protecting certain assets (and asses) -- "friends of the USA" who sell-out, intimidate and tyrannize their own people for a photo op with Hilary Clinton, Obama cufflinks, free SodaStream drinks, hidden promises, and money.

Egypt's rude dwarf Sisi is an excellent example. Panama's Manuel Noriega, Marcos of the Philippines, and South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem were other memorable allies - until dumped. Another is (was) Blaise Compaore, President of Burkina Faso since 1987 but this week on the run, who seized power in a coup by killing his predecessor (and long-time friend), President Thomas Sankara. After 27 years of rule, using multiple billions in ODA, Compaore's nation remains mired near the bottom of the UNDP's Human Development Index. Gross figures are terrible, but reality is worse: inequality adjustment discounts life expectancy by 41.1% (the privileged elite skews composite figures). The tiny ruling class pigged-out, and now desperately seeks to bugger-off before their bill arrives...        (see links here or here)

America has populated many dozens of governments with crooked stooges. With the fall of Compaore, each remaining US-sycophant feels just a bit more exposed - knowing their own people's raw hostility, Yankee contempt, and global condemnation...

US-backed coup-leader, Egyptian Pharaoh General Sisi

Ruthlessly Friendly: Coup-leader Compaore with Obama

Corporatism?

Corporate connections with the US government are collusive and corrupting.

The national security state demands corporate obedience, and requires secrecy. In some cases, mechanisms of government are now hidden under a corporate cloak. Government spies are invited (or invite themselves) into technology companies and major services companies. Ed Snowden was officially employed by Dell, and by Booz Allen Hamilton. While the NSA (or CIA) believed they were his true master, Ed Snowden had a different view.

This government imposition is a threat. The lack of accountability and oversight is wrong and also corrupt. Surely some patriots are led to believe they work for a common good (perhaps undercover for their own government) when in fact controlled by an enemy. The business of business is business - not operating surreptitiously as an undisclosed appendage of government or a ruling party or demagogue.

Some private firms got huge sums of public money under TARP - unjustified monster subsidies shared among a small core of corrupt colleagues.

Many tech firms have expressed concerns about government interference with their operations, and with US spy agencies secretly modifying their products (link). The public still knows little of what's going on. We're told the secrecy & deception are for our own well-being.

Dark hidden spiders
Drain each joy and energy
Their tangles, not ours!

 

Anti-Militarist!

What have the arrogant USA and half-willing allies achieved in our wars on Iraq and Afghanistan?

Nothing.

Death & destruction continue.

Waste. Unaffordable, inexcusable, criminal. Our militarist planners should be convicted and in prison. But we similarly failed to prosecute the genocidal planners who massacred America's native peoples. We did nothing after our horrific war in Vietnam & Southeast Asia, and criminal US "masterminds" escaped justice... America's worst enemy is its own cocky leadership.

Incompetent Japan?

At least 56 people are confirmed dead on Japan's Mt. Ontake (御嶽山) after a sudden volcanic emission of gas, steam, rock & ash on 27th September. Many more people remain unaccounted for and are presumed dead. As of today, more than three weeks have passed since the explosion.

Japanese rescue workers are doing their best in adverse conditions: hiking into a dangerous volcanically-active area now covered with thick, sticky ash. Bad weather and poor visibility have greatly prolonged search efforts. But part of the disaster can be blamed on poor preparation.

Both low & high tech responses are sorely needed. Japan should be able to rally robots and drones that can operate in poor conditions and bad weather, using infrared and other sensors to find survivors and victims. We've sent such machinery to Mars; why can't Japan create appropriate search & rescue technology? (or buy-in needed competency)...

Finding victims could be sped up by using trained birds (raptors) or dogs or foxes that can detect smells or terrain anomalies.

The well-intentioned Japanese search & rescue teams are being filmed from above, and appear rather foolish tramping about and sliding around in the mud.

Japan should be able to better respond in times of trouble. This is an area where Japan should invest its "peace dividend" and lead the world. Instead, Japan looks incompetent and pitiful.

This problem is worse in the face of concerted efforts by ruling-party LDP politicians to massage the way Japan is portrayed in the media: sudden concern with depicting Japan positively, for international audiences to see the nation in the best way possible. That idea is not bad - when based on fact. Japan could be much more competent, a global model for search and rescue, a nation where militarism was rejected, where swords were turned to serve society.

Japan can convert military technology to peaceful uses and ultimately global service; "Peace Technology" creates lasting friends to ensure the nation's long term security & success.

Welcome to Japan!

Tokyo has been chosen to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. There are some efforts already towards generating a more global outlook in Japan. But regressive and xenophobic elements of Japanese society are blatant and remain in plain sight.

Biased View of Foreigners, Ministry of Foreign Affairs pamphlet

Will Japan be allowed to hold the Olympics? The biggest threat just now is nuclear fallout and radiation pollution from the leaking Fukushima reactors. Japanese people are told there's no danger. Nobody believes that. But while local residents have no escape,  athletes of the world cannot be eager to expose themselves to poisons...

Japan excuses it's 34 years delay ratifying & implementing the Hague Convention

Nobel Peace Prize to Japan?

Supporters of Article 9 of Japan's Constitution have reportedly been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. The war-renouncing clause has been under serious threat by the ruling LDP and aggressive Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The loosely organized grass-roots effort begun by housewife Naomi Takasu and other common citizens is a longshot for the Nobel Peace Prize, but we can only hope the world notes that very many in Japan resist & condemn the belligerence of certain Japanese government employees. Resist Militarism!

"Aggressive Abe" threatens to wield any and all weapons for Japan's resurgence