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Shinzo Abe's Assassination

theatlantic.com

131–140 of 211 posts

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#131
post #84
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Japanese and Korean person I work with presents their names with the family name last when operating in an English speaking context. Conversely, my (American) name is often written family name first (and in katakana) when I'm in Japan. Real cultural sensitivity is accepting the social conventions of the society you are operating in.

Eh. I've never seen any articles referring "Jinping Xi", "Jong-Un Kim", "Jae-in Moon", "Zedong Mao", Yat-sen Sun". Non-heads of state get similar treatment: Lee Sedol, Bong Joon-Ho, Yao Ming vs. Hayao Miyazaki, Akira Kurosawa. This seems to have originated in the Meiji era (in the 19th century), when the Japanese assimilated many aspects of Western culture and traditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#I…

Yup, that's the problem, the practice is inconsistent even in Japan and we do say Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu etc for sufficiently historical figures. The Wikipedia guideline for this is quite the mess of exceptions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japa...

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Trump died, and in the aftermath it was revealed he had ties to a Chinese cult, his only remaining supporters would probably be the cult-like reality deniers.

The ones that almost triggered an insurrection and civil war a couple of years ago?

[dead]

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#133
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Moonies have woven themselves into the American right wing Our First Amendment specifically allows for freedom of association and religion. This used to be seen as an attribute, now it apparently has become cause for open prejudice. > The Epoch Times is Falun Gong's "media outlet" and it sponsors and shapes a lot of content online. It's all bankrolled by Shen Yun performances too. This is an intentionally misle…

How is it intentionally misleading? It's a newspaper given away for free in paper form, frequently. I don't believe the Epoch Times to be a credible news source, in the same way that RT is not one. That doesn't mean its not a news source worth looking at on occasion. I'm also skeptical of Falun Gong, first as a generally non-religious person, and then because they dont seem to like LGBTQ people very much - and I'm ve…

"however when the practicing of your religion potentially impacts the secular word, I get concerned - I generally believe in a strong separation of church and state, and anyone who starts to encroach on that, puts my hackles up."

But you cannot really separate personal believe from political stance. So religious believe will always influence the secular world. Meaning religious people will vote and lobby for people and organisations sharing their point of view.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#134
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These people (the Trump voters) are sick and tired of being lied to by fake politicians and they just want to burn the whole system down -- Trump is their fire bomb." -- Michael Moore, prior to the 2016 election.

That's not wrong, we have an issue with politicians promising things that are impossible or at a minimum highly implausible - because the structure of our political system means they won't be thrown out on their ear for making promises they can't keep.

I actually think it's that politicians have been unwilling to promise things that they feel are politically infeasible, and arguably make no sense, like building a wall to Mexico

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Moonies have woven themselves into the American right wing for decades. Reagan said the Washington Times, which is an organ of the Unification Church, was his favorite newspaper. You can see Falun Gong attempting the same in the United States. The Epoch Times is Falun Gong's "media outlet" and it sponsors and shapes a lot of content online. It's all bankrolled by Shen Yun performances too. These rabbit holes go t…

> which is an organ of the Unification Church Big TIL for me this one, and I thought I was smart enough for knowing about the connection between Falun Gong and the Epoch Times (I also know about the direct connection between Gulen's movement and one of the best private schools here in Romania).

Another one to watch is the MEK. Any US politician who speaks up for the MEK is a shill who will do anything for money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mojahedin_Organizatio...

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment says that religion and government should remain separate. I have the right to freely observe that some religions are aggressively testing that boundary more than others. But, "intentionally misleading"? Can you please explain the ways I've mislead people? Here are some essays which go into the claims in more detail. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into... https://www.nytime…

>> The First Amendment says that religion and government should remain separate That's not what it says. The US can't officially be Catholic. Nor can it officially be Protestant. That's what the first amendment says.

Well, I am not a american, but as far as I understand it, it does say it.

"The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that: regulate an establishment of religion; prohibit the free exercise of religion;"

Any incorporation of religious organisations into the state fabric, would be an "establishment of religion". So of course open religious people can be part of the government. But the government may have no favourite religion it subsidizes, teaches in schools etc. or prefers in any way.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#137

Meta comment on cultural awareness: "Japan wants you to say its leader’s name correctly: Abe Shinzo [1]" Why authors are still messing this up almost 5 years later is bewildering [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/asia/japan-name-abe-shinzo-in...

Cool, now anyone reading the name needs to be familiar with East Asian naming conventions to know which is the given and which is the family name. Should we just print it in katakana too, so that we're not "culturally unaware"?

We also expect people to know the basics of geography etc. Seems fine not to always cater to the ignorant, although there are specific magazines where you might expect that.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#138
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These people (the Trump voters) are sick and tired of being lied to by fake politicians and they just want to burn the whole system down -- Trump is their fire bomb." -- Michael Moore, prior to the 2016 election.

That's not wrong, we have an issue with politicians promising things that are impossible or at a minimum highly implausible - because the structure of our political system means they won't be thrown out on their ear for making promises they can't keep.

It's not that they promise things that they can't deliver. It's that they pretend to be fighters for good, while instead using the system for cynical self gain.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#139
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this line of argument to be a compelling refutation of any kind of consequentialist ethics from a human perspective. No human being ever has had or ever will have the ability to predict out the full consequences of an action throughout all time.

I invite you to put your ideology to practice and chop off your own arm. We don't have the ability to predict the full consequences after all. The rest of us understand that though few things are 100% certain, many things are possible to predict with a high amount of certainty.

I assume that sounded clever to you when you typed it, but I invite you to consider how it completely fails to follow in any way from the statement that human understanding of higher order consequences rapidly approaches absolute deficiency as the causal chain lengthens.

My practical ethic is something closer to deontology. And it includes things like “don’t mutilate your body.” It’s precisely because I can’t follow those higher order consequence chains that I settle for following general moral principles instead of attempting teleological justifications for my actions.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#140

Meta comment on cultural awareness: "Japan wants you to say its leader’s name correctly: Abe Shinzo [1]" Why authors are still messing this up almost 5 years later is bewildering [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/asia/japan-name-abe-shinzo-in...

One of the most annoying things about speaking the dominant world language (obviously it is also great in many respects) is that there is some pressure to change your language rather than just adjusting the sounds and spelling to the pre-existing phonetics. Erdogan is pronounced closer to erdoyan and Türkiye insisting on the umlaut. Nguyen and Pho rather than wynn and pha. Gyro instead of hyro. Blonde vs blond (WHY w…

It's the same in every language. When you take words and particularly names from another language, you have to make choices. Do you borrow the spelling or the pronunciation? Do you use a local version of the name? Or do you translate it?

Suppose an American guy named John comes to Finland. Should he still continue spelling his name as "John"? Or should he take the pronunciation as given and start spelling his name as "Dzon"? Or should he adopt an equivalent local name, such as Juha, Janne, or Jani? Or should he go with a traditional version, such as Johannes or Juhana? And what happens if he changes the spelling but his American passport still uses "John"?

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