In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
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toadold said
Just one of the reasons factions in the US and S.Korea who worry about N.Korea and the Chinese are getting pissed at the Lee administration and his leftists buddies. One problem with the “game theory” of diplomacy is that it assumes that the factions involved are acting for their own best interests. The reality is that at least one faction will not due to fanaticism, ignorance, or sheer bloody mindedness. If you throw in two crazies with with four to nine factions the “game” goes “chaotic.” I can picture some mid level Chinese apparatchik panicking over a “counter revolutionary” demonstration due to monetary collapse and doing something really violent with Japan, Korea, or even the Philippines for distraction and kicking off WW III. I keep thinking of the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared.”
———
One possibility in China might be a situation similar to pre-war Japan in the 1930s, in which an aggressive military is heavily involved in the government. The people are getting unruly and very angry at the civilian politicians and the CCP, who are raking off money and stashing it overseas. The PLA might decide enough of that is enough.
-A.
toadold said
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/14/b-o/
Aoumigamera said
I do agree with what you write in your response just above:
>One possibility in China might be a situation similar to pre-war Japan in the 1930s
Today’s China exactly occupies the same place as “pre-war Japan in the 1930s.”
Chinese military hardliners are similar to Japanese “皇道派” or “Imperial Way Faction.” If you replace Emperor with CCP, both of them look at the world alike, think alike and say alike.
Those Chinese military hardliners see Okinawa and Japan in a wrong way. They mistakenly think that Okinawan people hate Japan and the US, which is not the case.
Anyway, the important thing is to keep military balance with China. That is the key to not make China tempted to do reckless things such as, for example, attacking Japan Coast Guard ships near Senkaku Islets.
Btw, “干死日本” is not “1000 Deaths to Japan,” but roughly means “Fuck Japan, Die.” “干”is not “千.”
——–
A: Thanks for the note. I read that wrong and I’ll fix it.
That comparison to pre-war Japan is a good one, I think.
-A.