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The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

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Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#401

Post by erichocean »

photochemsyn wrote: post #273
rramadass wrote: post #157

I don't completely buy the "religious group" reason given by the assassin. It might just be a convenient cover story for any "State Actors" behind the assassination. Shinzo Abe had been a real thorn in the side of China and North Korea by pushing a hard-line approach towards them. He had tremendous worldwide political/economic clout and was instrumental in establishing the "Pacific Quad" as a real challenge to China…

Anyone who knows even a little history will realize that the aftermath of an assassination of a public figure results in an immediate increase in the popularity of the affiliated political party (the 'martyr effect'). The claims that the assassination of JFK in the United States in 1963 changed official US government policy are nonsense, incidentally - JFK was an ardent Cold Warrior who would have followed the same p…

> claims that the assassination of JFK in the United States in 1963 changed official US government policy are nonsense

Seriously? The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed entirely on JFK's death. I'd say that's…pretty major.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#402

Post by zopa »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #344
freeopinion wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a disturbing trend and indicative of failing health / vibrancy of political systems. If this is an indicator, how long has the U.S. political system been failing? John Adams was the second President starting in 1797. His son became the sixth President in 1825.

It surely goes in cycles in the US. Also arguably the US's republican model has had some of the weakest "democratic" aspects. Its popular veneration of the President as a martial pseudo-king "Command in Chief" (very weird to watch from up here in Canada, BTW, esp during the Bush post-9/11 years), its blatant blurring of church & state, its obsession with its military, its overt and obsequious patriotism and national…

> It surely goes in cycles in the US.

Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, Clinton. That spans the entire history of the country, and doesn't leave much room for cycles. I can't think of any period when inherited wealth and connections weren't extremely helpful in a political career.

I'd say that "ossified authoritarian impulses built deep into [the] system" is a global issue, not a uniquely American one.

A better answer is that contemporaneous class systems elsewhere in the world were so rigid, early in American history, that merely not having formal orders of nobility seemed shockingly egalitarian. Two and a half centuries later we're less eager to pat ourselves on the back for somewhat-better-but-only-somewhat levels of equality. But failure to make enough progress is not the same as regression.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#403

Post by lern_too_spel »

wronglyprepaid wrote: post #296
mkr-hn wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was going off of memory. I might be wrong about that part.

Here is an NPR article which shows that media coverage for Trump was less positive and more negative than for the 3 preceding presidents: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/02/555092743/study-news-coverage... And you can trust them because they rightly recognize Biden as a historical president: https://www.npr.org/sections/president-biden-takes-office/20... No matter how much you try and disparage the US press, for the most…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#404

Post by ConstantVigil »

robocat wrote: post #383
ConstantVigil wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Though I do want to say anecdotally at least that mind over matter can be pretty powerful stuff... Placebo's and Nocebo effects wouldn't exist without it.

FYI: whether the placebo effect even exists is somewhat controversial (in a different way from does god exist). https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=placebo+effect+myth There certainly is a lot of bad science and misinformation about the placebo effect.

I don't know... if it was 'somewhat controversial' you wouldn't be the first person trying to tell me about it...

And I am quite adept at finding controversial topics...

Annnnd my sources are usually from things like the NCBI... and Mayo Clinic...

But to be fair to you, I did find this study done by Wayne B Jonas posted to the NCBI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/

So I'll give it some consideration; but yeah... I usually ignore this kind of thing because of how misinformation is first seeded as being "They don't want you to know this" or "Unknown to others, but now you can learn the truth" etc, etc.

So no offense. Just me being my usual critical self.

Edit: I'd like to post this excerpt from the start of the article. It basically reiterates what I was ultimately getting at, while still pushing the authors original point and your point about placebo itself being a myth.

> The fact is people heal and that inherent healing capacity is both powerful and influenced by mental, social, and contextual factors that are embedded in every medical encounter since the idea of treatment began. In this chapter, I argue that our understanding of healing and ability to enhance it will be accelerated if we stop using the term “placebo response” and call it what it is—the meaning response, and its special application in medicine called the healing response.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#405

Post by geysersam »

dav_Oz wrote: post #165

As an incidental remark: I find it remarkable that on the surface I now know of three G7 countries / liberal democracies where the PM/President is the (grand)son of a PM/President himself. Bush Sr - Bush Jr Pierre Trudeau - Justin Trudeau Nobusuke Kishi - (Shintaro Abe; FM) - Shinzo Abe [Honorary mention: France with "Le Pen" both father & daughter made it to the second round in the presidential elections (2002; 2017…

It's ridiculous. I'd never vote for a president's relative as the next president. It's a matter of hygiene. There must be other equally (more) suitable candidates.

Voting for relatives gives us presidents like Bush Jr.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#406

Post by [deleted] »

brightball wrote: post #306
tkgally wrote: post #5

The linked article ends with this: “Why the Japanese media has refused to identify the ‘religious group’ that formed the motive for the killing must remain as speculation at this juncture, though it reflects very poorly on Japan’s status as a democratic nation.” It’s important to note that the Japanese media is not monolithic. It’s true that the major newspapers (Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Nikkei, etc.) and the broadc…

I ran it through Google Translate because I was curious. It appears to be something called the Unification Church? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church > The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church or Unificationism, is a new religious movement whose members are called Unificationists and sometimes colloquially Moonies.[2] It was officially founded on 1 Ma…

[deleted]

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#407

Post by lern_too_spel »

paulmd wrote: post #31
ehvatum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy It sort of is inconsistent with democracy. People should know for whom and for what they vote.

Is it? In most democracies in the world there are things you cannot publish even if they are true - Britain for example still maintains an official state censor, and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are . Britain and many other countries also maintain a right to privacy that protects non-public-figure individuals against salacious soap-opera tabloid…

Yes, there is information that should not be printed, including that which clearly harms national security, like the locations of all the nuclear missiles. In the US, this happens by voluntary cooperation by the press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

This specific story is not one of them. It is useful to society to understand that cults destroying individuals' financial security can make them desperate enough to assassinate.

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#408

Post by spinach »

jrgoff wrote: post #389
jhbadger wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Canada. "Free Speech" is no longer a part of modern left-of-center policy in general. Even the American ACLU no longer defines itself as a defender of free speech the way it used to. The argument (for what it's worth) is that the far-right is defending hate speech through the concept of free speech and so free speech is no longer worth defending as an ideal.

Would you mind linking to a source about the ACLUs changing relationship to free speech? I just looked at their website and it seems like they are still centering free speech as one of their major issues and a list of actions they have taken in recent years includes support of e.g. the NRA and an anti-muslim group.

You can tell by their twitter that their actions don't match their stated stance. They've become a woke social justice organization like many other institutions, repeating mantras such as: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1269413639464849409

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#409

Post by gwern »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #171
samatman wrote: post #153

What is this Shingetsu News Agency? They don't have an English Wikipedia page and searching for them turns up only their own content. Are they affiliated with communism? North Korea? American progressive movements? None of the above? Do we know that this isn't two cults bickering?

In any case, the article was very light on citations for the many accusations thrown.

The main source seems to be "Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System", Samuels 2001: https://www.gwern.net/docs/japanese/2001-12-samuels-kishiand... "Kuromaku and the Underworld" section.

(Aside from the lack of proper citation, tracking down a copy proved fairly challenging, so I have to wonder if OP has actually read it.)

Re: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

#410

Post by lern_too_spel »

jmcgough wrote: post #188
cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #100

The Moonies, often represented in America by some unfortunate Korean boy or girl, beg for money at American universities in exchange for food and lodging. It's essentially human trafficking and indentured servitude because they're trapped in a foreign country. So, if see someone who doesn't speak English who shoved a photo montage flip book clipboard of deprivation in front of you, think twice before giving them mone…

They aren't nearly as influential as you might think, especially in modern times. Maybe they were during the cold war or when they protested in support of Nixon. Their media reach is pretty limited, The Washington Times has a small number of readers. Edit: to the comment about $2B: that's almost mostly belonging to the founder who takes his money from followers. $2B is 130k a person when we're talking about 15,000 fo…

Their political strength is decreasing in the US, while Falun Gong's is on the rise. Both have similar political goals. Falun Gong is the cult that owns right wing rag The Epoch Times and puts on the Shen Yun show.
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