Sometimes a news headline makes you think WTF?

[smackaholic]

Yeah, I can't imagine there would have been population growth in 44-45. A large number of the married men were on various Islands away from their wives being killed by the USA/USMC/USN. So, they were dying in large numbers and those not dying weren't home banging the OL.

[LTS TRN 2]

Japan is unique among the world's nations in having experienced a period of about 2,000 years of uninterrupted existence and development. That is, no genocidal invasions, or being conquered or even defeated in a war by anyone, and no contagion of Abrahamic religion. Of course WWII reversed this, yet as with Germany seemed only to make the Japan stronger and more internationally dominant, as though a further level of its collective character was revealed. This collective entity of the Japanese is called Nihon, a word interestingly used interchangeably with Nippon, which is simply "Japanese." The Nihon is a unique phenomenon--understandably since the Japanese are uniquely homogeneous as a people and culture. The Japanese are approximately the third most racist culture in the world, following the (Nan) Chinese and the Indians (not the Cleveland Indians, but folks from the northern area of India). That the modern noose of neo-liberal Capitalism should strangle the nation of Japan, just like the nations of Europe, and America, is no surprise. Rather, because of the relatively disciplined and ordered nature of the Japanese, we see the dire results coming clear sooner. Sure, there's a drop off in population. Do you suppose they're like Mexicans or Moroccans, just pumping out kids irresponsibly? It is the stranglehold of economic imperative which is choking out Japan. You're next.

WW

[Wolfman]

Re: the lack of men in Japan. I remember my uncle, who served in Korea, had a good time on R and R in Japan as there were a lot of unattached women. Yes racially and culturally the Japanese are quite homogeneous. I recall reading about a Japanese soldier on one of the Pacific Islands who had the good fortune not to off himself. He surrendered to a Japanese American who he didn't understand why he was wearing a USMC uniform. When he came out of the cave and saw the rest of the Marines, quite a mixed lot, he was amazed at how different looking they all were.
Oh, add another item to their population decline, their accepted practice of baby killing abortion. Same thing happened in the old USSR.

[smackaholic]

What a bunch of bullshit.

The problem in Japan is simple. There are 100 million people living on a small barren rock. The place is filled to capacity. They tried doing something about there lebensraum problem a while back in China. Didn't work out so well. They pretty much need to figure out how to get by without any more pop. growth or maybe they could get the russkies to sell them a chunk of siberia, but, I kinda doubt it.

[Diego in Seattle]

Or they could make like China & start creating their own islands.

[LTS TRN 2]

What a bunch of bullshit.

The problem in Japan is simple. There are 100 million people living on a small barren rock. The place is filled to capacity. They tried doing something about there lebensraum problem a while back in China. Didn't work out so well. They pretty much need to figure out how to get by without any more pop. growth or maybe they could get the russkies to sell them a chunk of siberia, but, I kinda doubt it.

Smackie, don't be a moron--more than is the norm for you--Japan is a large and very fertile system of islands and land mass. The problem is the neo-liberal Capitalist system, which Japan quickly mastered, but which is itself entirely false and toxic. Don't you get what's going on? Consider Japan the canary in the coal mine, the first warning.

Do you understand anything about the grotesque trap of Capitalism? How the current alarming degree of disproportionate distribution of wealth is unprecedented and utterly disastrous? No? What's that, you're a simplistic wind-up idiot parroting the right-wing radio talking points? Really? A dumded down puppet who is willing to act like a clown?

WAKE UP

I'm fucking you, and taking everything from you, and I hate you, and I don't care that you know nothing of me...

[Wolfman]

I'm a simple person and a simple way of looking at it is: where do people flee to and flee from. Grotesque trap of capitalism my ass. I rest my case.

[LTS TRN 2]

Well that's simple indeed, Wolfie, but if you consider why all of these desperate refugees are fleeing their nations, you'll see that in each case the IMF and World Bank has, on behalf of the neo-liberal capitalist banks, has saddled the respective nation with crippling and permanent debt. That's how it works. The loans are used to pay the interest on previous loans, with the mandate that the nation's resources and and national industries are privatized. No jobs, no hope, nothing. And the banks don't care at all.

The entire system of "small government" and "no regulations" and "lower taxes" is simply a sleazy use of nice sounding phrases to allow the banks and corporations to suck up everything. And while Japan has a basic saneness to its social polices--healthcare, education, labor unions, and public accountability of elected officials--the opposite of the U.S.--its economy is completely intertwined with the current neo-liberal contagion which has effectively subsumed the entire global economy.

[LTS TRN 2]

YES..each nation hemorrhaging refugee emigrants is being choked out by the pernicious IMF loans--and attending "austerity" measures. Yes. And we can go right down the line and examine each one if you've got the attention span and interest. Central America has always been a prime target--that's why we've invaded the various nations close to a hundred times. Wake the fuck up, you're being played, and totally fucked over. It's not "socialists" at a ll, it's the Milton Friedman neo-liberal types, nice Irish boys who really don't care at all about you or your nation or any other nation.

Wake the fuck up...

[smackaholic]

Is it really your take that citizens of Mexico and other Central American nations who cross our southern border illegally are fleeing their country's IMF debt obligations?

Why yes, 88. Every last one of these primitive 3rd world hell holes were peaceful flourishing utopias, till them hook nosed kike bankers came along and informed them they were in debt.

Same goes for the Soviet Union. It was just cruising along, a workers paradise, until one day everyone there got a letter in the mail from Solomon, Solomon and Lipschitz LLC informing them that they were behind on their dacha payments. It imploded the next week. X infinity.

[Wolfman]

This place is amusing for sure. One one hand we have a guy who thinks the world is flat, and on the other hand we have a guy who believes all the socialist (communist) clap trap. What a great web site! If you didn't know any better, you'd think it was all a troll job. Sadly one can find like minded folks in other places whose brains must be wired the same way.

[LTS TRN 2]

YES..each nation hemorrhaging refugee emigrants is being choked out by the pernicious IMF loans--and attending "austerity" measures. Yes. And we can go right down the line and examine each one if you've got the attention span and interest. Central America has always been a prime target--that's why we've invaded the various nations close to a hundred times. Wake the fuck up, you're being played, and totally fucked over. It's not "socialists" at a ll, it's the Milton Friedman neo-liberal types, nice Irish boys who really don't care at all about you or your nation or any other nation.

Wake the fuck up...

You are a one-tune clown (aka a "Sanders"). Only you would complain that Central America is being "choked out" because it elected to borrow and then spend other people's money. Do you go to the bank and take out a loan, use the money to buy something for yourself, and then complain that you are being "choked out" because the bank expects you to repay the loan you applied for and received? Don't answer that. I already know how you feel about such things. So sad.

In fact I have a wide diversity of opinions on all sorts of subjects. For example, I've always insisted that Obama is a fraud. But in this very line, the matter of the IMF and the World Bank is consistent. Consider an assessment of its machinations,

http://www.unitypublishing.com/Government/IMF.htm

And, for example, its particularly rapacious efforts at subjugating Africa
http://www.africaw.com/how-the-world-ba ... roy-africa

Obviously, you are the one-note tool, happily parroting the right-wing tripe you hear on the radio and read in whatever pamphlets you're given.

[LTS TRN 2]

How about a hundred nations--including the U.S.--which have been completely fucked over by the neo-liberal Capitalist efforts? Starting basically in 1980 with Reagan, the senile puppet of the neo-liberals, wages have stayed flat while costs have skyrocketed, and basic government services have all-but disappeared. The great economic advance of America occurred in the New Deal era of Keynesian economic theory and its broad applications. The reversal of this since Reagan has resulted in he current decimation of the middle class, a tremendous increase in poverty, and the top one-percent accumulating unprecedented wealth--as the nation's infrastructure collapses, its environment becomes increasingly polluted, and its political process becomes a circus of corporate whoredom.

The description of the IMF's total fucking over of African nations is very clear, and the fact of corruption is irrelevant, especially when we consider the massive corruption right here in the U.S. Ghana, for example, isn't embezzling and hiding trillions of dollars in "defense spending" as is the exact case here.

The second article I provided outlines the sheer criminality inherent in the basic design of the IMF and World Bank. your defense of Capitalism is simply the standard mantra of Milton Friedman, a total disgraced fraud, who along with his fellow neo-liberals like Greenspan and Benanke, ushered in the '08 global meltdown.

[Wolfman]

^^^^^^^^
I think I've read those kind of ideas at Socialist Worker.com. Sounds awfully familiar anyway.

[LTS TRN 2]

They're not "ideas," but demonstrable facts. And all you've got is simplistic Sean Hannity bullet points, which are easily refuted.

[Rooster]

The reason Japan has a declining population is because child rearing is far more expensive there than most other places. More than one child is prohibitively expensive in a stagnant economy and where a child's future is quickly set in stone by the time his parents begin shopping for a kindergarten. Cognitive meritocracy begins at an early age and the competition is fierce for schools which give the child an advantage. By the time the kid reaches middle school it is already known if he or she will attend a university or not, whether or not they will become a salaryman, whether or not they will live out the rest of their lives after high school as a factory worker. It's a psychologically and emotionally brutal society where conformity and submission to behavioral norms is required and suicide is frequently the answer for those kids who see their future as too bleak to face.

[Diego in Seattle]

Starting basically in 1980 with Reagan

How could it start with Reagan in 1980 if he wasn't POTUS until 1981?

[LTS TRN 2]

The assertion that Obama is anything but a solid champion of neo-liberal (Hayek) policy is utter bullshit. Let's start with the TPP, the most neo-liberal wet dream ever, almost ...brought to bear by Barry's insistence on a fast-track, no debate, vote--the passage of which was secured by the corporate hijacking of every single senator and congressman in our government. Have you any idea just how much this draconian "treaty" screws us all?

As for the New Deal, of course it worked, employing millions of people while actually building the infrastructure of the nation. The war was unnecessary and catastrophic, just like the WWI.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

I keep asking you to tell me one place, one instance in time, anything, where your policies have resulted in a flourishing society. Just one.

He's a kooky ultra-nationalist, America First xenophobe...just like most of you.
You guys have more common ground than you even realise.

[mvscal]

America First

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Capital "A"...capital "F"...


I'm drawing distinctions. Don't be an ass.

[Dr_Phibes]

The New Deal was a complete and utter failure by every objective measure possible. The only thing that brought the U.S. out of the doldrums of the 1930's was a massive fucking war. Our economy was geared up to produce stuff the US and its allies could use to blow shit up overseas, and then repair.

This is one of those totally unselfconscious ironies that 'libertarians' trot out, the failure of the New Deal as a victory for a market fetish. Never mind that the New Deal was never as radical as it should have been were it not for the Supreme Court and reactionary interest. Never mind that the Depression was ended by, yes - the Second World War, and specifically to the way in which that war led to nothing short of the seizure of national economy by the federal government.

[LTS TRN 2]

The New Deal economic programs were a complete failure.

Bullshit. In fact The WPA produced, among many other projects, 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings built, rebuilt, or expanded. Among the latter were 41,300 schools. That's called infrastructure. Throw in the Hoover dam, and I'd say your tired neo-liberal parrot points are refuted.

As for Social Security, it's worked fine, though the rapacious kleptocrat neo-liberals want to privatize it, or just eliminate it all together and say "fuck you" to every senior citizen.

But the greatest accomplishment of the New Deal, of course, was the establishment and strengthening of labor unions and collective bargaining. This is precisely where America's middle class was born, and precisely what allowed people to actually make a decent living under decent conditions. Or what, do you suppose the industrialist lords just conceded that a 40-hour work week was fair, or that health insurance and safety measures were just the right thing to do?

And the New Deal was essentially Keynesian, just as the concerted effort by the neo-liberal contagion since Reagan has been anti-Keynesian, with the drive for deregulation and lower corporate tax.

Capital "A"...capital "F"...


I'm drawing distinctions. Don't be an ass.

Oh look, the spindly little slime has crawled forth to sputter his hissing little quips..

"America First"?...Well, b-juice, as Voltaire would say, "let us define our terms..."

When I say America, I certainly don't mean transnational corporations who happen to be based here. And I certainly don't mean dual-citizen government officials who mastermind outrageous false-flag attacks so as to launch permanent wars of aggression and profit (for them).

What do you mean by "Canada"? You know, that place up north where you pretend to live? :wink:

[Dr_Phibes]

I am, but the results of half-measures speak for themselves. You're revising history there :brad: All modern (OECD) economies have been Keynesian since Keynes was a boy, check yourself.

[LTS TRN 2]

No, Phibes, the present American economic model of the last thirty years since Reagan is decidedly neoliberal "Hayek"--and the results have been catastrophic. Let's cut to the chase..



This house of cards exceeds the dimensions and impact of the U.S. housing bubble of '08 by a factor of a thousand. And, as we consider always Japan as the barometer of this paradigm, consider that right now Japan is being suffused with untold thousands of Chinese "tourists" who are desperately buying everything they can fit in their oversized suitcases--rice cookers, clothes, golf clubs--(they're reselling them at whatever profit they can get) and this represents the last ditch effort to keep the rising water level from sinking the entire recent Chinese embrace of the neoliberal capitalist system.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

neoliberal "Hayek"

Yeah, you're an idiot.

the entire recent Chinese embrace of the neoliberal capitalist system.

China isn't "neo-liberal", you out-of-control shitbag. Turn off the Max Keiser and Amy Goodman.

[smackaholic]

China has a ruling political dictatorship at the top that controls the military and some infrastructure projects such as mega housing projects, but, having learned from the Soviet Union implosion, the actual economy is no holds barred capitalism. The political leaders give this machine a good leaving alone so long as they pay their taxes.

[LTS TRN 2]

B-juice's insipid muttering aside, are you suggesting, Smackie, that with the massively corrupt Chinese government giving "this machine a good leaving alone" is some kind of good thing? What part of teetering catastrophe about to ensue don't you understand? The Soviet Union didn't implode due to any economic collapse. On the contrary, when the communist regime folded the "Oligarchs," neoliberal (dual citizen) sharks moved in to immediately decimate the economy. Putin put many of them in jail--which our government did not following the neoliberal massacre of the world economy in '08. The pending TPP is the culmination of the neoliberal monstrosity gaining its stranglehold on the world. Japan is caught in the middle.

[LTS TRN 2]

neoliberal "Hayek"

Yeah, you're an idiot.

the entire recent Chinese embrace of the neoliberal capitalist system.

China isn't "neo-liberal", you out-of-control shitbag. Turn off the Max Keiser and Amy Goodman.

Here, b-juice, a bit of info on the father of neoliberalism.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30058.html

As far as Max Keiser, what could a spindly twirp like you offer to address or refute him? Or Amy Goodman for that matter.