Located 2790 results from search term 'japan'
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Commented in I Spent $1,000 on Japan's Tiniest Car (It was a bad idea).
It took me over a year to watch the original Journey Across Japan. It concluded and I thought he was done. Now here is Journey Across Japan North In A K Car. It starts out pretty boring (buying a car) but gets way better. This a fun off the beaten path series.
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Commented in Some Russian Troop Companies Down 94% in Ukraine, U.K. Intelligence Says
I feel sorry for the cannon fodder. The sooner this is over, the better. Hopefully the world will devise a post-war plan similar to what it did for Germany and Japan after WWII. Wouldn't it be great is 30 years from now Russia was a thriving, nation playing amicably in the world sandbox?
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Commented in The Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site Still Can't Find a Host
When I was young, losing wars got you some great consolation gifts. Japan and Germany got the Marshall Plan and brand new economies. When the U.S. lost Vietnam, they got Pho and Bahn Mi. Now, they lost Afghanistan to the Taliban and the Taliban gone on and taken over Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court. Someone didn't cut a very good deal this time around.
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Commented in Vending machines help ease access to COVID-19 tests in Japan
What can't you buy in a vending machine in Japan?
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Commented in Experts Ponder Nuclear Rockets To Send Humans To Mars
This will give some people the heebeegeebees. Imagine a nuclear accident a mile in the sky, rather than on the coast of Japan.
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Commented in Japan Then, China Now by Stephen S. Roach
Great article. There is a lot more to all of the transitions of economies too, its quite amazing. The US decided to be a consumer economy instead of a manufacturing one and exported those activities to lower cost countries. In turn, those countries were able to build infrastructure and in general improve the lives of their citizens. I've seen it first hand over the last 30 years. Japan became a consumer society, and now China is on that path. China has the ability to make and sell itself, much like the US did up until the 80s. The danger is unemployment, as that interferes with consumer purchasing. Anyway, every transition has its bogeyman.
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Commented in Huawei is the world’s fastest-growing smartphone seller despite increasing global scrutiny
When does that western arrogance stop for a bit? Global: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US and soon also Canada and UK. They sell more phones, because in the biggest part of the world, i.e. the rest, are also the majority of people who want to buy them. Which shows another propaganda-style way of communicating: those "crackdowns" are just a small percentage of the company's potential customer base. Maybe it is time for a lot of westerners to look at the bigger picture or stay small minded for ever and end up in a third world situation. Jesusfuckingchrist, I can get so angry over such simplistic way of thinking. Sigh.
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Commented in False Tsunami Warnings Sent Over Phones Spook Americans
The third incident in recent weeks. Two in the states and one in Japan.
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
By "progressive", I was referring to the self-described status of our education system. It is a fact that most 4-year Uni professors here have political beliefs that range all the way from from left to hard-left. I'm experiencing it now, any classes that aren't directly STEM related are as much about indoctrination as education. Their views infect what and how they teach. My views in this discussion in a US history 1112 class would likely lead to my failing it.
I think our viewpoints are irreconcilable. I'm second generation career military. My early reading was 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and the Time-Life series on WW 1 and 2. I later got into my father's books, Ghandi, Arendt, Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz and Kipling were the topic of many dinner table discussions. I've read a bit of the actual source material that your links are based on. Lengthy reading lists were part of the 4 different levels of PME I attended.
Ike went as far as he could, and lost. But that's what military leaders are supposed to do. Do what your stripes or stars can carry, pick your hill to die on, then shut up and color if/when you are overruled. History is written by the victors, true. but it also evolves over time as society changes. People in any era disagree on decisions made, especially in war. Later generations latch onto those disagreements as proof of their own thoughts. Times, morals, values change.
War is the natural extension of failed diplomacy. As long are there are humans with different ideas or ideology, there will be war. Don't misunderstand me, I was a war fighter, not a warmonger. I saw more than I wanted in '91 and didn't retire in time to avoid post 9/11. (I was retiring that December and had orders in hand when they went to stop-loss...I didn't get out until '06). The two-dollar bits of colored ribbon they pass out afterwards are expensively bought. I lost friends.
The fetishization of the military post 9/11 is sometimes hard to deal with, but people who have never seen the elephant will never understand those who have. I can't read this without crying
Let's not confuse targets with valid targets,
Civilians became valid targets in WWII the moment a lost BF-110 jettisoned bombs over London. That likely saved Britain and probably the war, because it shifted Hitlers focus. Because of the limits of air power that became evident in Europe, that didn't change between theaters. Today, with our smart bombs and GPS, drones and satellite surveillance capability, one plane with 2 250-pound bombs (with a CEP of inches) can take out a target that 500 planes with 1200 tons of bombs might have taken out then. And when, with all our gee-whiz capabilities, we still hit a wedding instead of a high-level meet of the bad guys, it's an atrocity. And because it is so, we put that on people who didn't have those capabilities.
There were so many pressures at the end of the war. The US didn't want the Russians in Japan, it was already apparent they weren't leaving eastern Europe. They (and the western powers) were already fully mobilized for total war and geography didn't favor the west. There was a lot more real estate to push them back than there was for them to push the allies back into the Atlantic. Russia got some of Germany's rocket, and nuke program scientists , and Truman wasn't sure how far along they were. It was inevitable that Russia would have nukes, possibly soon and a nuclear stalemate would have put the allies at an impossible disadvant...
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
Modern progressive revisionist history starts with the premise that the US was bad, wrong, misguided, and/or evil and seeks to apologize for it.
That’s some mean word salad you’ve got there. My main problem with this is that the sense you mean by the word ‘progressive’ has nothing whatsoever to do with Progressivism, progressives, what’s meant by ‘progressive,’ or anything like that. It’s a [PLACEHOLDER] for something else. One could as easily've used 'meddlesome kids,' 'longhairs,' 'libtard,' or 'Cultural Marxist.' Too quickly, this sentence conflates any critical thinking about American history with sedition, libels it with appeasement and then heaps on ladel after rich, steaming ladel of support of the enemy. Kind of a coversation chiller. Doesn't it seem a little bit on the nose, though? Like, whoever these modern progressives are you're talking about sure do seem to've set out for treasonous wreck and ruin the way you tell it, right? Let's agree to use the truer euphemism of the day for this, "The Blame America First Crowd," meaning anyone with an inkling of how different history is from how it's taught in Texas and California.
It's seen through the lens of current morality and modern warfighting, which is of course evil in itself. (Can't we all just get along?)
Yes, there is morality. Yes, war, whether yesteryear's now's or tomorrow's, isn't so far away from and certainly is not apart from evil. Fuckin' A. It's not working out. Let's just not. If we can help it. The stakes are too high. It is time to get beyond war. For real. Cheers.
WWII was a war to the knife.
I'm all for a good March to the Sea on an as-needed basis, but however sound the beating it's still cruel, still destructive, still waste — however little the regret.
Civilians were valid targets, not only because of their contributions to the war effort, but because bombs were so imprecise.
Let's not confuse targets with valid targets, if you're seriously claiming we cannot in any way judge events in the past through the veil of our times. Beyond our mere powers of consideration or not, make up your mind. If we get to have moral compasses of our own, then I didn't sign up for total war as the eternal condition of humanity. If I regard things like avoidable mass loss of life, forced relocation and collective punishment, enslavement, militarily attacking civilian populations, time and again nuclear sneak-attacking city after city to 'send a message' to some third country, ethnic cleansing, genocide, oh, mass organ harvesting, plus maybe bizarre sadistic medical and scientific research as war crimes and crimes against humanity then guess what, I may not be able to see eye to eye with you around how 'valid' Dresden was.
So what?
Had Japan known that the US didn't have more, and wouldn't have another until at least November of '45, the war might have continued.
Huh. If there was only some way unprecendented air, sea and land power could be used in some way against an island or set of islands. Tk!, thought there was the germ of an idea there for a moment. Ah well, I guess the tide went out there. Guess I've got a memory blockade.
The US brass thoughts on the morality or even military necessity then are as irrelevant as yours or mine today.
What am I paying you for then?
They advise, they don't decide.
Ike did. Ike went to the wall against nuking Japan, didn't he? Ike knew better. Was that irrelevant? To whom? ...
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
I started getting my military history in PME in the 80's, when it was a lot closer to the events. Modern progressive revisionist history starts with the premise that the US was bad, wrong, misguided, and/or evil and seeks to apologize for it. It's seen through the lens of current morality and modern warfighting, which is of course evil in itself. (Can't we all just get along?) WWII was a war to the knife. Civilians were valid targets, not only because of their contributions to the war effort, but because bombs were so imprecise.
If the US had had 20 nukes, they would have been prepared to use them all. (One at a time, until surrender). Had Japan known that the US didn't have more, and wouldn't have another until at least November of '45, the war might have continued.
The US brass thoughts on the morality or even military necessity then are as irrelevant as yours or mine today. They advise, they don't decide. Military leaders tend to develop tunnel vision, especially during war. Odd that with Japan so defeated, they still were holding on.
Russia's "invasion" was limited to the Kuril islands, and was almost entirely unopposed. Not even in the same universe as what the US experienced during the island hopping campaign. It was mainly a political ploy to show they were ready to play too and could join in in invading the main islands.
the survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the world's oldest hereditary monarchy, that won the Japanese surrender
I don't know to respond to that, other than that was one of the face saving measures and the only way it was allowed was for him to step off the divinity plateau and become a figurehead.
What won the surrender was showing them that we didn't have to pay the cost of invasion. We could utterly destroy them with near impunity. Their last hope was that we would be so war weary that another 6-12 months of horrendous house to house fighting and more servicemen going home in boxes that we would give up and go home. Japan intended to make every city another Stalingrad. Two atomic bombs showed them that wasn't going to go that way.
Yes, the US made concessions, mostly minor ones face saving ones for the Japanese. The throne was retained, but only as a figurehead, and Hirihito didn't get his neck stretched. The US wrote Japan's constitution. War crimes trials were held. Japan was occupied and rebuilt. (And who paid for reconstruction?)
Edit, on reread, may have been a little harsh. Sorry.
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
So you're saying the should have firebombed multiple cities
No, I'm not. The link, however, shows you U.S. brass at the time saying in perfectly clear language that nuking those cities had nothing to do with defeating the Japanese. One giveaway, Japan endured the nukes and didn't surrender.
The US position was simple. Unconditional surrender.
You say the Japanese people were reluctant to accept those terms? Fanatically resistant, even? No mystery there.
Unconditional surrender meant unconditional surrender, until it didn't. After the Soviet invasion began in earnest, the U.S. gladly accepted conditions. It was accepting the survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the world's oldest hereditary monarchy, that won the Japanese surrender. Not nuclear war. It didn't even require enriching uranium. Wonder if it could've ended the war any earlier, if tried?
simply left some facts out that didn't fit his biases
Anyone could make that mistake. I'm not going to go with Gar Alperovitz on this tossup who's kidding themselves, though.
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
So you're saying the should have firebombed multiple cities rather than using the only 2 nukes they had? Or should they have let Japan stall until the Russians came in to take half the country?
I've seen that nonsense that they were trying to arrange a surrender through Russia. They were trying to negotiate a surrender that would have left the emperor as a divine being, and left their society living under the Bushido code. The US position was simple. Unconditional surrender.
Looking at that other articles by that author, I'm not surprised he either didn't know that, r simply left some facts out that didn't fit his biases.
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
When, exactly, was it the U.S. became concerned with possible loss of life in Japan?
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
Something that 25 airbases on Okinawa each with a wing of 25 B-29s couldn't've done? To a Japan with nothing left to fly? Now pull the other one.
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Commented in US stealth bombers in Guam appear to be readying for a tactical nuclear strike on North Korea
I'm not sure Truman gets off that easily. With total U.S. air supremacy over Japan after the taking of Okinawa, the only conceivable necessity for nuking Japanese cities was as a threat to the Soviet Union as it began its invasion of Japan. Nor do I think we should blithely assume later psychopathic U.S. presidential administrations get off that easily. The U.S. may not nuke first lately, but I'm long past thinking there is something governments would never be stupid enough to do.
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Commented in The Making of an American Nazi
Thoughts:
First of all, like most longform articles (this one being a ~45 minute read) it tends to be a lot of prose, so sometimes you have no idea where it's going or what it's getting at. That being said, it's very interesting, and a good look (I think) at why someone like this turns into who they are.
As I reported this story, Anglin sent his trolls after me, too, and my interactions with them confirmed my suspicions that they were, by and large, lost boys who felt rejected by society and, thanks to the internet, could lash out in new and destructive ways [...] Most imagined they were rising up against an unchecked political correctness that maligned white males. The more the liberal establishment chose to revile them, the more they embraced their role as villains.
I honestly believe this is part of the problem with a certain brand of feminism/leftist dialogue - if you keep telling someone they're the devil incarnate (they are patriarchy itself, and patriarchy is a weakly defined label that basically means "evil"), they're not going to try to see if you're right, they'll look for the alternative, and often that'll end up being the extreme alternative. In this case, you end up with people choosing a point of view purely because it's the opposing argument to a conversation that has belittled them.
Some problems with the article:
But Anglin wasn’t content to troll alone. He wrote instructions for his followers on how to register anonymous email accounts, set up virtual private networks, mask their IP addresses, and forge Twitter and text-message conversations
but then a bit later on
That the Russian government wouldn’t know about an American inside its borders publishing a major neo-Nazi website seems improbable.
So on the one hand he's tech-savvy and can explain masking IPs and VPNs well enough for his users, but on the other hand it's "improbable" that he could escape notice of another government? I mean, the site went down (good read too by the way, with comments by cloudflare on free speech protection). And after a bit of looking around it seems as it's switched through a few domains and is now available only via the TOR network (direct link to Daily Stormer via a surface-web TOR redirector, warnings & here be dragons). The article goes on to make a weak argument that Russia is somehow tied to this (whereas the simpler explanation is that certain Russians will benefit from a wider spread of ideology such as found on the Daily Stormer, so they'll spend some money to spread it).
lastly
He and Auernheimer often bragged that it got millions of unique visitors a month, but comScore put the site’s monthly visitors closer to 70,000.
And then at the end she wraps up with a quick summary on how, which I mentioned earlier, DS was shut down & has been born again, but with smaller numbers and less coherence (i.e. more conspiracy theories), and that's only getting worse/better (less? more? fewer people are visiting!). Two thoughts on this: first of all - this article, I'm assuming, is trying to highlight who the man behind a site that is the most well-known voice for the alt-right, which, I'm assuming the author thinks, especially with the Overton Window comments, is an issue. But then there's that number, which is ridiculously small - it's ranked at #394,283 According to Alexa rankings. So it's portraying this big issue, while at the same time saying it'll stop being an issue soon-ish. Which brings me to...
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Commented in Americans are willing to pay $177 a year to avoid climate change
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
It's not huge, I agree, but it is growing, and faster in some countries than others.
It has grown quite a bit in the past several years though, US is now 1.4% and globally 1.8% . Worth noting, Japan @ 5%, Germany @ 6%. Italy @ 7.5%, UK @ 3.4%....and they don't have the great expanse of the badlands of the US. I would imagine that with proper incentive, the US could be much bigger with advancements to harvesting making it even more attractive.
Anyway, as far as taxing, companies won't get the bill, you will, and as long as you pay, you'll be getting your energy from fossil fuels,because you can't choose an option. Uncle Sam will get more revenue to fund it's Club Med.
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Commented in Donald Trump threatens to 'totally destroy North Korea'
It's possible but not without also totally destroying South Korea as well. And maybe Japan.
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Commented in 24 Things Americans Don't Realize Are Weird
hundreds of flavors is Japan's fault. They just used Oreos for the picture. Btw... when you type it out, Oreos is a weird looking word.
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Commented in 24 Things Americans Don't Realize Are Weird
Oreos is Japan's fault? What is it about Oreos anyway? You've just never had Tim-tams.
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Commented in 24 Things Americans Don't Realize Are Weird
#6 is Japan's fault
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Commented in Wars are not won by military genius or decisive battles
Strategic depth and resolve is always more important than any commander. We saw such depth and resilience in Tsarist Russia in 1812, in France and Britain in the First World War, in the Soviet Union and the United States during the Second World War, but not in Carthage or overstretched Nazi Germany or overreaching Imperial Japan. The ability to absorb initial defeats and fight on surpassed any decision made or battle fought by Hannibal or Scipio, Lee or Grant, Manstein or Montgomery.
"It's not about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. "
~ Sylvester Stallone
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Commented in If Progressives Don’t Wake Up To How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail
And therefore is there anything any one single person could have done morally better given Truman’s, Obama’s or Washington’s circumstances?
Really? Blue skying this here, but Truman might’ve not nuked city after city. That’s not really what you mean, though, is it?
By not dropping the bomb an invasion of Japan would have taken countless more lives.
Nuking those cities wasn’t about defeating Japan. Japan had no air power, and newly built U.S. bases on Okinawa were set to field sorties of 625 B-29s at a time unopposed, all day, every day. The U.S. could’ve bombed Japan back under the ocean without stepping so much as a toe onshore. There’s nothing credible about the excuse that the atomic war against Japan was about not invading Japan. Authorities will tell you so, but then authorities will also tell you a lot of things.
By not droning Yemen Middle East outright war would taken countless more lives.
You don’t have to make shit up. Yemen was dirt poor and a hard place to live once, and now it’s an ongoing genocide in which the U.S. is an enthusiastic participant right alongside our mutual friends of the Saudis, Wahhabi Salafist terrorists somewhat better known as Al Qaeda. Countless more lives? Hogwash.
It is a trade off of shitty end game scenarios and any sensible person calculates the least shitty one and takes responsibility for the consequences.
Oh, people take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions now? I thought we were being all “might makes right,” but now we’re back to “my country, right or wrong” again?
How does one add all that up and conclude Obama was “bad” is beyond my comprehension.
Libya for the win, Alex.
At most you might conclude that the presidency is “bad”.
So especially high status people in authority exist on a plane above all moral dimensions. Got it. Stalin. Pol Pot. Hitler. It’s all good. Got it.
The article is saying “we need to elect Jesus, anything less is fascism”.
Your words. My suggestion is that sense of the article’s meaning sounds bogus to you because it is.
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Commented in If Progressives Don’t Wake Up To How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail
And therefore is there anything any one single person could have done morally better given Truman's, Obama's or Washington's circumstances? I argue no.
By not dropping the bomb an invasion of Japan would have taken countless more lives.
By not droning Yemen Middle East outright war would taken countless more lives.
It is a trade off of shitty end game scenarios and any sensible person calculates the least shitty one and takes responsibility for the consequences.
How does one add all that up and conclude Obama was "bad" is beyond my comprehension. At most you might conclude that the presidency is "bad". That is not something I agree with but at least it's a line of thinking I can follow. But, regardless, it is a separate argument and certainly not what the article is arguing. The article is saying "we need to elect Jesus, anything less is fascism". That's profoundly immature and unimaginative.