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Shinzo Abe's Assassination

theatlantic.com

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Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#141

Post by kergonath »

Aloha wrote: post #123
GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #104

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 kind of makes sense on an intellectual level, but I don’t think it is very plausible. Trump promised a lot of things when he was elected, most of which are practically impossible. I think he just promised the right things for his audience, whereas most politicians are so far up their arses that they don’t know what actual people want or care about.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#142

Post by philwelch »

throwaway128128 wrote: post #119
timmytokyo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newsweek is basically owned and operated by the Moonies now, too [1]. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olive...

Oh, TIL. I've noticed Newsweek's decline. Lots of flame-fanning.

Newsweek infamously relaunched itself in 2014 with a dramatic story falsely accusing a Japanese man living in California of being Satoshi Nakamoto. So it’s not exactly a credible outlet.

FWIW, the owner of Newsweek at the time wasn’t the Moonies, but rather David Jang, who is an evangelical Presbyterian. Things have apparently gotten complicated since then, with a change in ownership and then Newsweek itself reporting a year ago that they were suing Jang: https://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-sues-david-jang-leader-sec...

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#144

Post by User23 »

imiric wrote: post #54
User23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet atheists absolutely took the cake for most murder by a religious faction. What you’re describing is a people problem, not a religion problem.

> Soviet atheists [...] religious faction. You're confusing atheism for a religion. Those murders were conducted by oppressive governments with a specific agenda, that didn't come from some atheist scripture. > What you’re describing is a people problem, not a religion problem. It's a problem of organized groups of people motivated by a collective ideology. This is manifested primarily by religions, since most religi…

> You're confusing atheism for a religion.

Atheism is a religion. Atheists observably claim to have achieved gnosis. It’s agnosticism that is an absence of belief.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#145

Post by SilasX »

dmonitor wrote: post #88
dieselgate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not getting into politics at all but I imagine it'd be utter chaos if anything similar were to happen to Trump, that's an interesting perspective to hear though.

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.

Wouldn’t a better analogy be a Mexican cult, to better approximate a country with the same relationship as China to Japan?

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#146

Post by kergonath »

hutzlibu wrote: post #133
Aloha wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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.

Sure. It’s not exactly what’s discussed here, though. We’re talking about Reagan and Bush (and Abe and others) coldly using propaganda machines backed by extremist cults for influence campaigns. It’s far beyond the same pushing the agenda for which they were explicitly elected, which happens to be backwards on a lot of levels but is at least genuine and open.

These organisations also cause concerns of foreign interference, considering their links with political parties and powerful politicians abroad.

There have been similar issues in Europe with extremist parties bankrolled by Russia to destabilise local political systems, which does not have any religious aspect. The problem is not the religion, it’s the structures, their objectives, and how they work and corrupt.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#147

Post by phatfish »

throwaway128128 wrote: post #98
treme wrote: post #70

It's fascinating to me that moonies managed to have Abe & Trump speak at their event for millions. Probably one of most fascinating political cults of modern times.

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…

Ha, that's what Shen Yun is about. Their ticket sales convoy pops up in an innocuous town in the UK a couple of times a year, looking rather out of place.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#148

Post by lern_too_spel »

User23 wrote: post #139
lern_too_spel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why doesn't your practical ethic include the general moral principle of not promoting religious nonsense? The causal chain is simple. People who believe religious nonsense can be easily made to believe any nonsense that hurts them (and have done so again and again), including mutilating their own genitals and the genitals of their children, which conflicts with and takes priority over your other moral principle.

Your defeatist attitude leads to bad public policy, where the powerful take advantage of the weak because the weak are stupidly convinced that they cannot understand the consequences of limiting their own exploitation.

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#149

Post by eastbound »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #104
macintux wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...his only remaining supporters would probably be the cult-like reality deniers. He built a huge base largely on people who prefer to believe him over reality.

"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.

Isn’t Michael Moore a Democrat?

Re: Shinzo Abe's Assassination

#150

Post by saltcured »

jasode wrote: post #65
mrob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do China and Korea get to change English naming conventions? What makes Japan an exception?

>But why do China and Korea get to change English naming conventions? Americans are exposed to Chinese names in both orderings of "Familyname Firstname" and "Firstname Familyname": - "Familyname Firstname" ordering : actor Chow Yun-fat, and basketball player Yao Ming - "Firstname Familyname" ordering: actor Simu Liu, pianist Yuja Wang, and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma.

Not only that, we might be exposed to them for years without really knowing which is the family name and which is the given name!

In a vacuum, I might have guess "Chow Yun-fat" as starting with the family name because I know that the hyphenated, two-part names are usually given. But a name like "Yao Ming" I might not have had any idea, since I don't have the cultural exposure to know which single syllable words look more like family names versus given names.

Imagine expecting a Chinese person to figure out "Larry David" with no other context.

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