Brits lose the vote after being abroad for 15 years
帰国後に小泉が靖国参拝するつもりだと知った米議会では、当初予定されていた小泉の米議会での演説を許さない方針に転換した
小泉らが首相の靖国参拝によって中国を怒らせ、日中関係の改善を阻害する策を採った理由は、それによって日本の国是である対米従属策を維持できるからだ
米国は、イラクとアフガニスタンの占領で０４年ごろから失敗色が強まった後、中国やロシアの国際影響力を容認し、中露に助けられて世界運営していく方向に静かに転換した。米国は、中国に頼まれると、日本に対し、中国との関係を悪化させるなと圧力をかける状態になった。
０６年９月に首相が小泉から安倍に交代する際にも、おそらく米国から安倍に対し、首相になったらまず中国と韓国を訪問せよと圧力がかかったと考えられる
米政府は事前に安倍の参拝予定を知っていたはずだし、安倍は米国に批判されるのを知りながら参拝したはずだ。
米中枢で、市場としての中国を重視して、中国との対立激化を避けたい勢力は、安倍の靖国参拝を批判するが、中国との対立を好む軍産複合体は、辺野古のこともあるので安倍に味方し、オバマ政権に圧力をかけて安倍批判を弱めてくれるという筋書きだったと考えられる。
His core aim is to ‘escape from the postwar regime’ ― that is, to reverse the liberalising reforms introduced to Japanese politics and society in the wake of the Asia Pacific War ― and his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine is a very explicit expression of that aim.
as China grows, Japan has more and more reason to be anxious about China’s power, and less and less confidence in America’s willingness to protect it.
STATEMENT
We oppose construction of a new US military base within Okinawa, and support the people of Okinawa in their struggle for peace, dignity, human rights and protection of the environment
We the undersigned oppose the deal made at the end of 2013 between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Governor of Okinawa Hirokazu Nakaima to deepen and extend the military colonization of Okinawa at the expense of the people and the environment. Using the lure of economic development, Mr. Abe has extracted approval from Governor Nakaima to reclaim the water off Henoko, on the northeastern shore of Okinawa, to build a massive new U.S. Marine air base with a military port.
Plans to build the base at Henoko have been on the drawing board since the 1960s. They were revitalized in 1996, when the sentiments against US military bases peaked following the rape of a twelve year-old Okinawan child by three U.S. servicemen. In order to pacify such sentiments, the US and Japanese governments planned to close Futenma Marine Air Base in the middle of Ginowan City and move its functions to a new base to be constructed at Henoko, a site of extraordinary bio-diversity and home to the endangered marine mammal dugong.
Governor Nakaima’s reclamation approval does not reflect the popular will of the people of Okinawa. Immediately before the gubernatorial election of 2010, Mr. Nakaima, who had previously accepted the new base construction plan, changed his position and called for relocation of the Futenma base outside the prefecture. He won the election by defeating a candidate who had consistently opposed the new base. Polls in recent years have shown that 70 to 90 percent of the people of Okinawa opposed the Henoko base plan. The poll conducted immediately after Nakaima’s recent reclamation approval showed that 72.4 percent of the people of Okinawa saw the governor’s decision as a “breach of his election pledge.” The reclamation approval was a betrayal of the people of Okinawa.
73.8 percent of the US military bases (those for exclusive US use) in Japan are concentrated in Okinawa, which is only 0.6 percent of the total land mass of Japan. 18.3 percent of the Okinawa Island is occupied by the US military. Futenma Air Base originally was built during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa by US forces in order to prepare for battles on the mainland of Japan. They simply usurped the land from local residents. The base should have been returned to its owners after the war, but the US military has retained it even though now almost seven decades have passed. Therefore, any conditional return of the base is fundamentally unjustifiable.
The new agreement would also perpetuate the long suffering of the people of Okinawa. Invaded in the beginning of the 17th century by Japan and annexed forcefully into the Japanese nation at the end of 19th century, Okinawa was in 1944 transformed into a fortress to resist advancing US forces and thus to buy time to protect the Emperor System. The Battle of Okinawa killed more than 100,000 local residents, about a quarter of the island’s population. After the war, more bases were built under the US military occupation. Okinawa “reverted” to Japan in 1972, but the Okinawans’ hope for the removal of the military bases was shattered. Today, people of Okinawa continue to suffer from crimes and accidents, high decibel aircraft noise and environmental pollution caused by the bases. Throughout these decades, they have suffered what the U.S. Declaration of Independence denounces as “abuses and usurpations,” including the presence of foreign “standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.”
Not unlike the 20th century U.S. Civil Rights struggle, Okinawans have non-violently pressed for the end to their military colonization. They tried to stop live-fire military drills that threatened their lives by entering the exercise zone in protest; they formed human chains around military bases to express their opposition; and about a hundred thousand people, one tenth of the population have turned out periodically for massive demonstrations. Octogenarians initiated the campaign to prevent the construction of the Henoko base with a sit-in that has been continuing for years. The prefectural assembly passed resolutions to oppose the Henoko base plan. In January 2013, leaders of all the 41 municipalities of Okinawa signed the petition to the government to remove the newly deployed MV-22 Osprey from Futenma base and to give up the plan to build a replacement base in Okinawa.
We support the people of Okinawa in their non-violent struggle for peace, dignity, human rights and protection of the environment. The Henoko marine base project must be canceled and Futenma returned forthwith to the people of Okinawa.
January 2014
Norman Birnbaum, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
Herbert Bix, Emeritus Professor of History and Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton
Reiner Braun, Co-president International Peace Bureau and Executive Director of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms
Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John W. Dower, Professor Emeritus of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alexis Dudden, Professor of History, University of Connecticut
Daniel Ellsberg, Senior Fellow at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, former Defense and State Department official
John Feffer, Co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) at the Institute for Policy Studies
Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Joseph Gerson (PhD), Director, Peace & Economic Security Program, American Friends Service Committee
Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International law Emeritus, Princeton University
Norma Field, Professor Emerita, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Kate Hudson (PhD), General Secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Catherine Lutz, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, Brown University
Naomi Klein, Author and journalist
Joy Kogawa, Author of Obasan
Peter Kuznick, Professor of History, American University
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace laureate
Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action
Gavan McCormack, Professor Emeritus, Australian National University
Kyo Maclear, author of Virginia Wolf
Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus, Brown University/ Veteran, United States Army, Henoko, Okinawa, 1967-68
Mark Selden, a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University
Oliver Stone, Filmmaker
David Vine, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University
The Very Rev. the Hon. Lois Wilson, former President, World Council of Churches
Lawrence Wittner, Professor Emeritus of History, State University of New York/Albany
Ann Wright, Retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat
(In the alphabetical order of family names, as of January 7, 2014)
Why has the income gap widened since the 1970s? Many economists emphasize a mix of reasons that include, prominently, how technology has affected the marketplace value of various occupations. In general, new tools of productivity have benefited the most educated workers, while automating some middle-tier jobs out of existence.
Other forces may have also played a big role, from tax changes that disproportionately benefited the rich to rising global competition in the labor market. Recent decades have also seen a decline in the share of workers represented by union collective bargaining, and a decline in the minimum wage relative to inflation.
But a broad look at the numbers shows that there are nuances in the rich-get-richer story.
It’s probably not true, for one thing, to say that “the poor get poorer” these days. Rather, some studies conclude that, when you divide the income ladder into fifths, all groups have been gaining in their disposable income – what they have each month after taxes are paid. And all have gained in the volume of goods and services they are able to consume.
The poor
The bottom fifth of US households averaged $23,700 in income for 2010, up from $15,900 in 1979. As with the other CBO numbers highlighted in this article, that’s an after-tax figure that includes transfer payments from government programs as well as wages.
Scholars find that in the US it is relatively hard for people to climb from one income class to another. There's mobility, but the correlation of income levels between parent and child tends to be closer in the US than in most OECD nations.
首相の行為は、国の指導者が国のために戦死した人に哀悼の誠をささげるものにほかならない。
１）日本の戦争を正当化しようとした、あるいは、そのように思われる言動があった。
２）参拝の公開に踏み切ったにかかわらず、その平和的意図に関する、根回しがなかった。
これをとらえ、首相の靖国参拝をめぐり日本が国際的に孤立しているかのような主張もあるが、日米同盟は強固だ。だが、同盟関係にヒビが入っていると誤解されるような状態は望ましくない。
The cash part of the salary may be low by US standards – Khobragade herself, as a mid-ranking Indian diplomat, earns less than what the US considers a fair wage – but, with the other benefits, the compensation is attractive for a domestic helper. More to the point, Khobragade did not find her maid in the US labor market and “exploit” her; she brought her from India to help her in her representational duties, on an official passport, with a US visa given for that purpose. In almost no other country are local labor laws applied in such a manner to a foreign diplomat’s personal staff.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphPrivately, US diplomats express frustration at their helplessness in the face of theatrical grandstanding by the ambitious federal prosecutor, Preet Bharara, an Indian-American who has launched a series of high-profile cases against Indians in America. For once, however, the zealous Bharara seems to have slipped up, because Khobragade was arrested at a time when she enjoyed full diplomatic (not just consular) immunity as an adviser to India’s United Nations mission during the General Assembly. The State Department’s handling of the matter – which included approval of Khobragade’s arrest – has been, to say the least, inept.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWorse, just before the arrest, the maid’s family was spirited out of India on US visas for victims of human trafficking. The implication that an Indian diplomat in a wage dispute with her maid is guilty of human trafficking understandably riles Indian diplomats as much as the treatment of Khobragade after she was detained. The American habit of imposing its worldview self-righteously on others is deeply unwelcome. To most Indians, common discourtesy cannot be repackaged as moral virtue.
. Until the US displays appropriate deference to the sensitivities, pride, and honor of other peoples and cultures, it will continue to be resented around the world.
大相撲の芝田山部屋に入門した元力士の２０歳代男性が、兄弟子の幕下力士（２３）らに暴行を受けて左目がほぼ失明したとして、兄弟子と芝田山親方（元横綱大乃国）、日本相撲協会に約６９００万円の損害賠償を求める訴訟を東京地裁に起こしたことがわかった。
男性の代理人弁護士が７日、記者会見を開いて明らかにした。提訴は昨年１２月２６日。
訴状によると、男性は中学卒業後に同部屋に入門したが、２００９年８月、兄弟子に一升瓶で頭を殴られるなどして左目に網膜剥離を発症。手術後も親方や兄弟子からの暴行が続き、１２年９月にほぼ失明したとしている。男性は昨年、引退した。
男性は１１年、警視庁に傷害容疑で被害届を出したが、東京地検が１２年２月、兄弟子を不起訴にした。弁護士によると、男性は「親方からの謝罪は今もなく、裁判で責任を認めてほしい」と話しているという。芝田山部屋では１０年にも、親方が元力士を暴行したとして傷害容疑で書類送検されるトラブルが起きている（親方は不起訴）。同部屋は提訴について「親方が不在でコメントできない」としている。
（2014年1月7日18時35分 読売新聞）
