[HN Gopher] The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe
___________________________________________________________________
The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe
Author : hunglee2
Score : 445 points
Date : 2022-07-10 05:15 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shingetsunewsagency.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shingetsunewsagency.com)
| jsnk wrote:
| I would like to wait more for more information. This speculation
| seems incomplete and premature, and in the end, likely,
| inaccurate.
|
| Political assassinations rarely stem from one particular
| situation or event, but accumulation of beliefs and world view
| over a long period of time. He may stated his disdain for Abe to
| be his connection with the religious organization, but that can
| easily be just one of many reasons that he believes have re-
| enforced him to commit assassination.
|
| The assassin went through a lot of trouble and difficulty
| building his own gun and ammos. I think it's probably more likely
| that there's more political and ideological motivation behind his
| action than just Abe's roundabout connection to the church that
| ruined his mother. It's just too speculative and unlikely for now
| until there's more evidence.
| g5095 wrote:
| This is a great point, the 'motivation' seems incredibly
| shallow and one dimensional.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| The assassin stated that he killed Abe due to his association
| with a "certain group", so this theory lines up nicely. Of
| course it's all speculation until we hear from the suspect
| themselves.
|
| Update: the suspect has now confirmed.
| https://japantoday.com/category/crime/update2-abe-shooter-sa...
| [deleted]
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| cde-v wrote:
| suction wrote:
| Japanese people I know are adamant that Abe had no ties or did
| ever voice support for the Moon sect, ever. I am now wondering if
| Abe had kept it secret and the shooter somehow found out.
| toyg wrote:
| If the cult ruined his life and he took it out on the first
| politician he could somehow link to them, the problem is not
| whether such politician really had such relationship, but the
| fact that such idea was credible in the first place. Are cults
| in Japan tolerated a bit too much, leaving them free to ruin's
| people lives? Are politicians just sitting by, or even enabling
| such cults? _Those_ should be the questions people have to ask,
| if the aim is to avoid a repeat. This is particularly true when
| you look at the fact that such cults were directly responsible
| for past terrorist activity in Japan.
| rasz wrote:
| >Are cults in Japan tolerated a bit too much
|
| This one is still around, albeit at the fringes
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo
|
| " Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday
| cult, was hanged after being sentenced to death in 2004"
|
| For real cult tolerance look no further than S.Korea. Any
| innocent social gathering has >50% chance of being cult
| recruitment gathering.
| tartoran wrote:
| Probably cults freedoms are tolerated for votes
| rtpg wrote:
| I know loads who know about this. The guy was in a publicly
| published video last year, it's not a massive secret.
| hackerlight wrote:
| I read he gave a speech there once. Maybe the killer heard
| about it and, combined with whatever mental illness he has,
| interpreted it as something more than it was.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| In the US, Mike Pompeo (ex Secretary of State), Mike Pence
| (ex Vice President), and Trump (ex-President) have also given
| speeches to an offshoot of the Moonies...wild.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/pence-pompeo-
| he...
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
| fomine3 wrote:
| Abe-unification relation is well written by some media so it
| can be easily found, but maybe not well known for who only
| watch TV and newspaper.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Do not quite get the last line. All democratic countries have
| church played a part and individual tried to ... let us say
| Catholic Church and scandals of ... no politicians involved
| totally ?
|
| The downplay is odd. But that might be cautious. We will see.
|
| Democracy ... not see what reflect ....
| g5095 wrote:
| "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."
|
| I'm struggling to understand the author's bias here (there
| clearly is one), are they claiming that the poor reflection on
| Japan as a democracy is:
|
| - that the media has not reported an unsubstantiated
| 'speculation'? (sounds like good journalism?)
|
| - that that politicians have religious beliefs? (separation of
| religion and state shouldn't forbid religious people holding
| office, just from mandating it)
|
| - that the murderer was anti-religiously motivated? (sign of a
| hate crime)
| [deleted]
| shard972 wrote:
| The 3rd I believe. The point of the article is to show Abe's
| connection to the church through political alliances developed
| since his grandfather and the Japanese media is at some level
| seeking to downplay the prevalence of anti-religious extremism.
| spurgu wrote:
| Site is getting hugged.
|
| https://archive.ph/2S6PD
| duxup wrote:
| Isn't it a little early to be so sure exactly why this happened?
| lettergram wrote:
| That's some top level conspiracy theory.
|
| First, Who shoots someone just because of "connections"? Why not
| go after the church itself?
|
| Further; this person got two shots off over a 4-5 second period.
| Just walked up to one of the most powerful politicians in Japan.
| I personally feel there's something more to this -- gross
| negligence or a conspiracy idk.
|
| The communist opposition was actively calling for his overthrow
| by any means and calling him hitler (reminds me of the USA
| frankly). China has been celebrating his death.
|
| Even if we assume this person believed this (highly speculative),
| then it was likely amplified by Chinese propaganda. China, USA,
| Russia, etc is known to support opposition parties and amplify
| conspiracy theories to support their aims.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Why not go after the church itself?
|
| Allegedly, the shooter's original target was an official of the
| church.
|
| > I personally feel there's something more to this -- gross
| negligence or a conspiracy idk.
|
| This is an official who has been out of power for a while now,
| and is known to be in declining health, at a local event, in a
| country where political violence has been low in recent years,
| _and_ a country with exceptionally low crime rates. You could
| totally imagine security being lax and complacent given the
| circumstances.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "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."
|
| Because they aren't stupid. When you name names and provide ample
| details you have given the killer things that encourage others -
| infamy, a platform to spread their message, etc.
|
| In the US, we _know_ that providing these details, such as the
| killer 's name, and even the media's hyper focus on the event
| contribute to copy cats.
|
| Why don't we create a law to prevent the media from naming names
| of mass killers or assassins and giving them a platform? After
| all, we know that this will save lives.
|
| Edit: why disagree without reply? No right is absolute. There are
| already restrictions on speech, and that same reasoning is what
| allows gun control.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/
| andrew_ wrote:
| My guess as to why you're not getting replies because the
| content of your comment is highly polarizing, contains
| assertions as absolutes rather than points of debate, and would
| likely result in camp vs. camp which will play out ad
| infinitum.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I can see that the topic is generally polarizing and that my
| first sentence is assuming and could be better. I do ask a
| question of why we don't have a law (or really just have
| people sue over the coverage contributing to the act). The
| part about knowing that sensationalized and detailed reports
| contributes is a pretty solid fact (theory, analysis, and
| anecdotal admissions from copycats).
| 15155 wrote:
| Pen the statue for us, what would one look like that would stop
| this type of release of names?
| ksaj wrote:
| Especially on a global scale. No law in the US or other non-
| Japanese country regarding the press is going to have bearing
| on Japanese laws regarding Japan's media outlets.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you read the study, there is a link to the FBI guidelines.
| Essentially, don't name the shooter. It would also be
| beneficial not to linger on one negative event for a week or
| more, but that's not as easy to limit. Ideally we would want
| journalists and networks to practice responsibility and leave
| out the name voluntarily, but it seems the drive for profit
| makes it necessary to step in with a legal solution.
|
| https://www.dontnamethem.org/
| 15155 wrote:
| I agree that the media should not glamorize these bad
| actors.
|
| > Why don't we create a law
|
| I was asking which statue would prevent this. How would
| that statue read? What would be "easy to limit?"
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you expect. I'm not writing some law
| that won't actually be used. The idea should be easy to
| grasp - journalists publishing/broadcasting the
| picture/name of a murderer who is not at large will be
| fined. The fine could be set a number of ways, but should
| be substantial and graded based on the income of the
| individual and organization.
|
| I think you're taking that "easy" quote out of context.
| 15155 wrote:
| Your ideology to deter crime is quite easy to grasp -
| implementation via abridging the freedom of speech is
| problematic.
| giantg2 wrote:
| _Why?_
|
| There are numerous restrictions already on freedom of
| speech for this very reason.
| concordDance wrote:
| Throwing out a possible issue with this idea: it lets political
| parties assassinate rival politicians without losing popularity
| (in the case where the link isn't strong enough for a
| conviction but IS strong enough to say the killing was done by
| that party).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe. But if you have a lone individual assassinating
| someone, then you've given them a platform to spread their
| message. It seems this was a case of an individual. If there
| was any evidence that this was organized by a party, then it
| could be appropriate to name the party but still withold the
| individual's name to prevent notoriety.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "There are already restrictions on speech..."
|
| There are particular categories of speech that aren't
| considered to be "protected speech". And those categories can't
| be expanded just because some politicians and judges think it's
| a good idea.
|
| "that same reasoning is what allows gun control."
|
| A lot of what we consider "gun control" is under active
| constitutional debate.
|
| Why go to all this trouble? I agree with the general idea that
| we shouldn't glorify mass shooters. But all we have to do is
| stop clicking and start to develop a cultural idea that it's
| wrong to report is a way that makes killers (in)famous.
| Mainstream outlets will stop doing it and the fringe is not
| very important.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "And those categories can't be expanded just because some
| politicians and judges think it's a good idea."
|
| Why not? Isn't that how the current ones came to be?
|
| "But all we have to do is stop clicking and start to develop
| a cultural idea that it's wrong to report is a way that makes
| killers (in)famous."
|
| That would be great, but what would that look like? I don't
| see a mechanism for incentizing them via culture. The only
| thing I can see is if people start sueing the media like they
| have gun makers for improper marketing.
|
| "A lot of what we consider "gun control" is under active
| constitutional debate."
|
| Is it really a lot? It seems the majority of gun control
| regulations still stand under the new one prong standard.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Why not? Isn't that how the current ones came to be?"
|
| There's an interesting history of rights prior to the
| Constitution. But now that we have a constitution, there's
| a defined process for amending it.
|
| Of course, there is still room for interpretation. But if
| you allow politicians and judges to wildly change the
| constitution on a whim, you might as well not have one.
|
| What you are suggesting qualifies as such a wild change to
| the notion of a free press, and should not be permitted
| without an amendment. And if such an amendment were
| proposed, I think it would get very little support.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "There's an interesting history of rights prior to the
| Constitution. But now that we have a constitution,
| there's a defined process for amending it."
|
| Yet the courts and legislature have added restrictions
| without following that process.
|
| "But if you allow politicians and judges to wildly change
| the constitution on a whim, you might as well not have
| one."
|
| I generally agree. However, it's not a radical change to
| include killers names under the "fighting words" standard
| since it is "inherently likely to produce a violent
| response" as evidenced in research and through
| anecdote/commonsense.
|
| "And if such an amendment were proposed, I think it would
| get very little support."
|
| Why is that? The right should support it since it's a
| solution that doesn't involve further firearm
| restrictions. The left should support it since they want
| to take action on the issue and make meaningful changes,
| which this is. And there doesn't appear to be any issue
| with restricting the killer's name as it doesn't
| interfere with the message or ideas the journalist would
| be reporting.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Yet the courts and legislature have added restrictions
| without following that process."
|
| I don't mean to suggest that it's perfect or followed
| perfectly. As I said, there's room for interpretation.
|
| "However, it's not a radical change to include killers
| names under the 'fighting words'"
|
| I disagree and I doubt you'd find many people who
| understand our legal system that agree with you.
|
| "Why [would it not get much support]?"
|
| Hypothetically, let's say I'm wrong. Wouldn't all those
| people who support it be able to pressure mainstream
| outlets to suppress information that glorifies killers?
| Sounds like a much easier alternative that would produce
| the desired result.
|
| Personally, I already avoid reading news articles about
| mass killers. I usually wait a while, and then read
| wikipedia or something if I'm interested to know.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I disagree and I doubt you'd find many people who
| understand our legal system that agree with you."
|
| Care to elaborate? Protections under the Constitution are
| actually more likely to have the interpretations change
| over time. I also don't appreciate the insinuated insult.
|
| "Wouldn't all those people who support it be able to
| pressure mainstream outlets to suppress information that
| glorifies killers?"
|
| It's much more effective via law. You have many people
| who are indifferent, so you only need more support than
| the detractors (like how an NPS works). Not only that,
| but you could still have a minority who support a network
| that still releases the name, undermining the others who
| don't.
| yucky wrote:
| >After all, we know that this will save lives.
|
| There are lots of things that we know will save lives. Banning
| driving of all non-emergency vehicles. Banning vices and
| handing out 50 year prison sentences for any violation. Banning
| skydiving. Banning soda. We can make a very long list of things
| we can do to save lives. But there is a price to pay, and that
| price isn't worth it.
|
| Banning free speech and the free flow of information is not a
| price worth paying.
| dmix wrote:
| Do we in fact know that if a few big news orgs dont mention
| the shooters names that it will motivate them to not do it? I
| doubt you could ever control such a thing even if you tried
| (Wikipedia will have to have so it's just one more step to
| google it).
|
| Plus the shooters often care about change via harming their
| targets (creating fear in a particular group is what makes
| something a hate crime or terroism) which happens regardless
| if their actual name is published.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's evidence in the linked study as well as in
| anecdotal admissions by some perpetrators (eg Columbine
| murders expected mass coverage and hoped that it would
| inspire others). Is there any evidence to refute this?
| dmix wrote:
| I was talking specifically about naming the perpetrator,
| not that news coverage might create copycats:
|
| > the [FBI] developed the "Don't Name Them" campaign. The
| campaign aims to curb media-induced imitational mass
| shootings and suggests minimizing naming and describing
| the individuals involved in mass shootings, limiting
| sensationalism, and refusing to broadcast shooter
| statements or videos.
|
| This sort of thing comes up every time there's a mass
| shooting, commenters attack the media for naming the
| person.
|
| My point is that even if the media on non-specific about
| the names/motives those details will come out somewhere
| and people will find it if they want to. Trying to
| control specific information is a fools game.
|
| The one actual study they reference is how imitation
| suicides increased with coverage (ie subway jumpers ->
| more suicides via subway jumpers).
|
| https://sci-
| hub.st/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...
|
| I do believe reducing the _volume_ of coverage could
| certainly have an effect. Wall-to-wall coverage makes
| these acts notorious and puts the ideas into peoples
| minds.
|
| If there is going to be reporting on it avoiding
| biographic details on the perp won't make much
| difference. Plus I really doubt the main motivation of
| most of these shooters is to be personally named, rather
| they want maximum impact for their crimes. They know the
| specific details will spread via other channels
| regardless, all it needs is the original seed in the
| media about the general crime.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I believe part of it is the volume providing ideas. But
| it still seems that a lot of it is about infamy, as
| referenced in the FBI link as well as these attacks. I
| think that while the volume provides the idea, the infamy
| is the "benefit" that the killer sees in that idea. It's
| possible that without that benefit, they might kill
| themselves instead of others. Not an ideal outcome, but
| certainly a better one.
|
| 'The Sandy Hook murderer kept a spreadsheet of previous
| mass murderers and their number of kills. The WDBJ
| murderer killed his victims while they were on the air!
| And then faxed his 23-page manifesto to ABC News. The
| Orlando Pulse nightclub murderer called a local news
| station during his attack! And then stopped to check
| Facebook to see if he'd gone viral. The Parkland murderer
| recorded and posted a video, stating, "When you see me on
| the news, you'll know who I am." The Aurora theater
| murderer told a psychiatrist that he recognized he
| couldn't make an impact on the world in science, but he
| could become famous by blowing people up. And most
| telling, the Umpqua Community College murderer wrote on
| his blog about a previous mass murderer, saying, "I've
| noticed that people like him are all alone and unknown.
| But when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows
| who they are."' TED Talk by Tom Teves.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree that there are many things that we _could_ do, and
| that there are costs associated with them.
|
| "Banning free speech and the free flow of information is not
| a price worth paying."
|
| I generally agree with this, but what harm is done by banning
| the media from using the name of a criminal likely to be
| notorious (mass murder, assassination, etc)?
| radford-neal wrote:
| Well, for starters, it would mean that members of the
| public who had interacted with the murderer, and had
| important information about their motives, means of
| obtaining weapons, accomplices, etc. would not realize that
| they had important information, and therefore would not
| make this information available to investigators.
|
| Next, it would mean that powerful interests who had
| responsibility for the crime, by instigation or negligence,
| might be able to avoid accountability for their
| actions/omissions, since people would not be able to
| connect them to the murderer.
|
| Then there's the inability of the public to see what
| aspects of current culture might have lead to the crime, or
| what deficiencies in mental health care contributed, etc.
|
| Democracy is based on the belief that ordinary people can
| be trusted to know the truth, and use it in governing
| themselves. Perhaps you don't believe that, and are just
| against democracy?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and therefore would not make this information available
| to investigators."
|
| I find it unlikely that investigators would not be able
| to find those connections themselves, especially in the
| digital age.
|
| "Next, it would mean that powerful interests who had
| responsibility for the crime, by instigation or
| negligence, might be able to avoid accountability for
| their actions/omissions, since people would not be able
| to connect them to the murderer."
|
| How so? The media could still report on groups
| instigating the crime without naming the person
| committing it.
|
| "Democracy is based on the belief that ordinary people
| can be trusted to know the truth, and use it in governing
| themselves. Perhaps you don't believe that, and are just
| against democracy?"
|
| Don't troll, it's against the rules. Our democracy has
| had restriction on speech throughout its history, and has
| added others. Withholding the name has no impact on how
| ordinary people will make decisions since it's not
| pertinent to the underlying issued which could be
| described through impersonal means (talk about the actual
| mental illness you mentioned and not the specific
| person).
| yucky wrote:
| >I find it unlikely that investigators would not be able
| to find those connections themselves, especially in the
| digital age.
|
| Less than half of all murders in the US are solved in
| this "digital age", and the majority of the ones that
| are, are because of witnesses and informants telling what
| they know.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But we aren't talking about unsolved murders. You already
| can't release a name for those because they're
| _unsolved_. Witnesses and informants already have
| knowledge that a crime was committed. They can come
| forward on their own. Otherwise, investigators have to
| track them down anyways. The fact that we know who has
| perpetrated the crime makes it much easier to find any
| links because the investigators have access to the
| digital trail.
| [deleted]
| ETHisso2017 wrote:
| Nobusuke Kishi (Abe's grandfather) has an extremely interesting
| backstory:
|
| > As a self-described "playboy of the Eastern world", Kishi was
| known during his four years in Manchukuo for his lavish spending
| amid much drinking, gambling, and womanizing.[34] Kishi spent
| almost all of his time in Manchukuo's capital, Hsinking (modern
| Changchun, China) with the exception of monthly trips to Dalian
| on the world famous Asia Express railroad line, where he indulged
| in his passion for women in alcohol- and sex-drenched
| weekends.[29] When not visiting the brothels of Manchuria, Kishi
| was demanding sex from the waitresses who served him at the
| expensive restaurants he patronized. When he was locked up in
| Sugamo prison in 1946 awaiting trial, he reminisced about his
| Manchukuo years: "I came so much, it was hard to clean it all
| up".[29] According to Driscoll, "photographs and written
| descriptions of Kishi during this period never fail to depict a
| giddy exuberance: laughing and joking while doling out money
| during the day and looking forward to drinking and fornicating at
| night."[35] Kishi was able to afford his hedonistic, free-
| spending lifestyle as he had control over millions of yen with
| virtually no oversight, alongside being deeply involved in and
| profiting from the opium trade.[30] Before returning to Japan in
| October 1939, Kishi is reported to have advised his colleagues in
| the Manchukuo government about corruption: "Political funds
| should be accepted only after they have passed through a 'filter'
| and been 'cleansed'. If a problem arises, the 'filter' itself
| will then become the center of the affair, while the politician,
| who has consumed the 'clean water', will not be implicated.
| Political funds become the basis of corruption scandals only when
| they have not been sufficiently 'filtered.'"[4]
|
| > At the same time, Kishi repeatedly expressed a disdain for
| Chinese people as impure and unclean.[32] One of Kishi's closest
| friends and business partners, the yakuza gangster Yoshio Kodama,
| summed up his boss's thinking about the Chinese as follows: "We
| Japanese are like pure water in a bucket; different from the
| Chinese who are like the filthy Yangtze river. But be careful. If
| even the smallest amount of shit gets into our bucket, we become
| totally polluted. Since all the toilets in China empty into the
| Yangtze, the Chinese are soiled forever. We, however, must
| maintain our purity".[33]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| China is a source of, a threat of and competitor of china. It
| has tried to invade japan (and japan to Korea plus the whole
| china). This geo-political game will be played out in the
| coming decades, with Taiwan, Korea and USA all in.
|
| Individual... some of the grands of his as prime minister
| important.
|
| Sex part not that much. The founder of modern china has a few
| Japanese women and even had a daughter there. Not to mention
| his well known name is actually adopted from his Japanese name.
| chrischen wrote:
| There's definitely a culture of brothels that still exists
| thats pretty foreign to the West. You won't really hear about
| it because Japanese people don't just offer there stories up to
| foreigners... but I've had sources inform me of places where
| people can go for orgies (in a way Americans may casually visit
| a strip club which is a toned down version of this) and I
| believe in some cases can even be expensed to the business as
| entertainment.
| implements wrote:
| Watching "Midnight Diner" on Netflix I was struck by a much
| more casual acceptance of stripping and prostitution than I
| would have expected.
| longtimegoogler wrote:
| I'm not sure how much that reflects general attitudes. That
| show is also set in Shinjuku which I believe houses a lot
| of strip clubs and other similar activites.
| uwagar wrote:
| interesting. any books or websites to find out more about
| this culture?
| petre wrote:
| I hadn't realized but it's sometimes even mentioned in some
| of Haruki Murakami's stories.
| distantaidenn wrote:
| Yeah the orgy places are one of the worst kept secrets here.
| Everyone knows they exists, but it's not really spoken of. I
| had a friend (Japanese) that was invited and he just
| explained it as being weird. The place he went to just had
| glass rooms full of naked folks doing things naked people
| tend to do together. It was a combination of an orgy and a
| voyeur event.
|
| Underground life in Japan can get pretty extreme. Typically
| foreigners aren't privy or allowed in such environments. Not
| saying it doesn't happen, though.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Today I've learned about Asia Express, which had air
| conditioned cars in the 30s and ran on what looks like a branch
| of Russian-built China Eastern Raiway.
| pharrington wrote:
| "extremely interesting backstory" is definitely one way to
| describe Nobusuke Kishi's time as the army officer who was in
| charge of Manchukuo. "Vile history" is the phrase I'd
| personally use.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > Kishi's time as the army officer
|
| He wasn't an army officer. He was a lawyer/bureaucrat in
| charge of the forced industrialization of Manchukuo after
| studying the economic systems of places like Wiemar Germany,
| and was given total authority by the army to run this
| vertical as he saw fit.
| pharrington wrote:
| Thank you for the correction, mea culpa
| m-ee wrote:
| Even vile doesn't quite cover the scale of the horror,
| especially Unit 731
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_Manchukuo
| lesstyzing wrote:
| I read the Unit 731 Wikipedia page recently and almost
| wished I hadn't. Im surprised I'd never heard about it and
| neither had any of my friends. Not that it's a competition,
| but some of the atrocities I read about on that page were
| worse than any other World War atrocity I know and it seems
| like it's just been swept under the rug.
| krapp wrote:
| It's swept under the rug because the US pardoned many of
| the the perpetrators (such as Shiro Ishii) in exchange
| for data about their experiments, which were then
| continued under the US biological weapons program, and
| projects like MKULTRA.
| oefrha wrote:
| I was aware of the crimes of Unit 731 and how the U.S.
| granted immunity to the worst perpetrators in exchange
| for data, but never read about the details. I did that
| just now; what a horrifying rabbit hole that was. One
| disgusting bit:
|
| > Although the Soviet authorities wished the prosecutions
| to take place, the United States objected after the
| reports of the investigating US microbiologists. Among
| these was Edwin Hill, the Chief of Fort Detrick, whose
| report stated that the information was "absolutely
| invaluable;" it "could never have been obtained in the
| United States because of scruples attached to experiments
| on humans" and "the information was obtained fairly
| cheaply."[7] On May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to
| Washington, D.C., that "additional data, possibly some
| statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by
| informing Japanese involved that information will be
| retained in intelligence channels and will not be
| employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."[10]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiro_Ishii#War_crime_immun
| ity
|
| Basically, everywhere you look you can find these
| absolute monsters at the helm who drool at "cheaply
| obtained" and "absolutely invaluable" data from gruesome
| live human experimentation. Some were just given the
| opportunity to carry out more of it.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Its almost like when conditions are right, even people we
| consider normally on the moral side, end up flushing down
| down the toilet any bit of humanity, because of some
| 'benefits'. Justification can be as weak as general
| threat, terrorism, preparing for future 'if something
| happens'.
| ghostcluster wrote:
| Pretty gruesome reading.
|
| I had never heard of this either:
|
| > During the final months of World War II, codenamed
| Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan of Unit 731 was to use
| kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the
| plague. The plan was scheduled to launch on 22 September
| 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Biological_warfare
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There's a horror movie about Unit 731 called "Men Behind
| the Sun"[1]... It's not high art or anything, but it is
| super disturbing... one of the most horrific things I've
| ever seen.
|
| [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Behind_the_Sun
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| It's pretty well known that the Japanese Empire did some
| of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. Their
| number of victims is roughly in line with that of the
| Nazi. I will hasard that the USA doesn't like to talk
| about Unit 731 because they gave immunity to the
| researchers in exchange for the results of their research
| on chemical weapons in an operation mirroring Paper Clip
| for rockets.
| differentView wrote:
| Does the Unification Church have more influence than Soka Gakkai
| in Japanese politics?
| Legogris wrote:
| Officially and publicly, no.
|
| Behind the scenes - who knows (not meant to be suggestive).
| nier wrote:
| > He adds that Shintaro Abe, Kishi's son and Shinzo Abe's father,
| "depended upon 'Moonies' in his election campaigns."
|
| They got the family situation wrong. Shintaro Abe is Nobusuke
| Kishi's son-in-law not his son.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > Shintaro Abe married Yoko Kishi [ja], daughter of Prime
| Minister Nobusuke Kishi, in 1951.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shintaro_Abe
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Seems like the article has been fixed already. That was fast.
| istanbul7 wrote:
| samatman wrote:
| 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?
| tbihl wrote:
| In any case, the article was very light on citations for the
| many accusations thrown.
| gwern wrote:
| 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.)
| florin_g wrote:
| For the sake of objectivity, Shinzo Abe was killed by Tetsuya
| Yamagami and there is no excuse or justification for this murder.
| rramadass wrote:
| 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 and North Korea. Even after stepping
| down he had been active in drumming up support for his assertive
| stance against them which obviously wasn't to their liking.
|
| It will be interesting to see what the investigators uncover over
| time.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If there was state level involvement couldn't they have
| smuggled a proper gun instead of having him make an abomination
| that could very well have completely failed (and missed in the
| first shot)? And why go after an ex soldier in that case? It
| doesn't seem to check out at all.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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
| policy Johnson did, if faced with the imminent collapse of the
| South Vietnamese government. If anything the assassination
| strengthened the Democratic Party's political position at the
| time, and the same kind of effect seems to be taking place in
| Japan, with Abe's party expected to win a major victory.
|
| The story of an individual with personal grievances (possibly
| acting alone, possibly not) related to a parent who went
| bankrupt by donating all their money to a religious
| organization affilated with the victim makes much more sense in
| terms of a plausible motivation. The other part of the puzzle
| is why security for such a well-known public figure was so
| poor, but Japan's history of low gun violence might explain
| that.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _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.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Abe was hardly the most anti-China or anti-North Korea MP, and
| he was no longer prime minister for years anyway.
|
| Not only would China or North Korea not get anything out of
| assassinating him, if they were discovered to have done so this
| would make Japan even more anti-China and anti-North Korea.
|
| So this theory doesn't really seem that likely.
| Jensson wrote:
| How would China or North Korea convince a Japanese soldier to
| openly kill his leader and face death penalty? There is very
| little social exchange between these countries, extremely few
| foreigners speaks Japanese, I just don't see how they could
| indoctrinate him to such a degree that he would give up his own
| life for that cause.
|
| Extremely few people give up their life for a cause even when
| they grew up in that society, so I really don't think that this
| is plausible at all.
| rramadass wrote:
| This is Spycraft 101;
|
| Lots of Japanese have been abducted by North Korea to train
| their spies, build cover stories to live as Japanese (i.e.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_agent) across
| generations etc. Since NK is a proxy for China, one can
| expect a flow through. See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No
| rth_Korean_abductions_of_Jap...
|
| In popular Movie/TV parlance (eg. Russian spies in the USA)
| these Sleeper Agents are called "The Illegals".
| [deleted]
| fma wrote:
| Well, this is my fear of TikTok. We've seen how Facebook and
| Twitter (and certsin news media) polarized/brainwashed
| Americans in convincing Obama is Muslim and not born in the
| US through crude algorithms to increase clicks.
|
| Imagine TikTok, who isn't just driven by ad revenue but the
| need to keep the Chinese government happy.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I think birtherism spread mostly in places other than
| Facebook and Twitter. Its heyday was before those groups
| were on social media. Facebook's audience in 2010 was much
| younger than its audience in 2016, and Twitter adoption at
| that point was pretty minor.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I agree with your view. The fact that the killer went through
| the stress of making homemade guns, which likely involved
| lots of hiccups, shows he had a very deep grudge for his
| target, and I see being (allegedly, can't confirm yet) raised
| in a religious cult that bankrupted your mum as an ideal
| catalyst for such a grudge.
|
| And if recent years have taught me a lesson, it's that real
| life is often stranger than friction. What you think can only
| be achieved by state-level, mafia-like collaboration ends up
| being the work of random individuals (e.g., that Bitfinex
| hack where two funny characters were caught with $4.5bn of
| stolen bitcoin).
| KaiserPro wrote:
| This is a lot of words for the basic conjecture that he was
| killed by/for being a moonie.
|
| The problem with this reporting is that it takes the killer's
| supposed words at face value. This is a big risk, especially as
| at this stage we are not entirely certain that those words are
| accurate.
|
| Now, this may eventually appear to be the case, but the level of
| certainty presented in this article is unfounded.
| [deleted]
| rtpg wrote:
| This article is within the more general context, but we have
| the words of the assassin, discussion by the police of not
| wanting to discuss the church specifically for the "obvious"
| reasons, the mother of the assassin being identified by the
| church as being a member... "it happened because of X" is maybe
| very strong but lots of the story does align and is being
| corroborated.
| kragen wrote:
| What were the words of the assassin?
| atwood22 wrote:
| > "My family joined that religion and our life became
| harder after donating money to the organization," Tetsuya
| Yamagami, who is unemployed, was quoted by the sources as
| telling police. "I had wanted to target the top official of
| the organization, but it was difficult. So, I took aim at
| Abe since I believed that he was tied (to the
| organization). I wanted to kill him."
|
| https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14665352
| kragen wrote:
| Thank you! But, that seems to not say which religion it
| is?
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| The article ends implying the Japanese media is wrong by
| downplaying and leaving out the name of the church, but when I
| was reading more on wikipedia about the Unification Church they
| referenced this article from the media, which I will need to
| translate but would seem to refute this:
|
| https://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/-/97322
|
| For those who are in Japan is that a good take by the author of
| the submitted article? Is (edit: it fair to say) the media hiding
| the connection?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Naming a cult on media is a taboo in Japan, for fear of
| retaliations and verbal abuses than as common courtesy.
|
| There even used to be a P2P app called Perfect Dark, known in
| a... different... name early on, so as to make it 'immune to
| police prosecution'. Eventually the name changed to what it is,
| and stories of police working on it did start appearing. That
| was 2010s.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Perfect dark still exists.
| pppq wrote:
| What was the previous name of Perfect Dark?
| distantsounds wrote:
| it was called "Share" and before that there was WinNy, a
| fork of the WinMX p2p client.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It was a four letter name that I'm not comfortable
| posting here...
| pppq wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand. Why is it uncomfortable to
| name a piece of software?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Oh no. I failed to include that part in the original
| comment. The logic was that the name(think
| "LordVoldemort.exe") cannot be aired or published, so
| authorities cannot communicate arrests to the public,
| which makes it moot to do so, thereby shielding the
| users.
| ETHisso2017 wrote:
| Gendai is regarded in Japan as a "tabloid" (think National
| Enquirer). So the mainstream media in Japan can be accused of
| hiding the connection.
|
| More explanation here:
| https://twitter.com/wdavidmarx/status/1545956836310159360
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| Thank you, I am sure there is a lot of context I don't
| understand as an outsider.
| elcamino44 wrote:
| I am in Japan, have been watching the news, and this is the
| first time I'd seen the Unification Church named as the motive.
| My impression has also been that the domestic media is
| downplaying the connection.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is a strange article with an odd angle.
|
| They guy initially wanted to avenge the family's misfortune by
| targeting someone high up in the church which he blamed for
| unscrupulously taking their money, when they proved too difficult
| (inaccessible) he turned his attention to mr Abe who was
| associated with the church and was out campaigning making for an
| easy target.
|
| The article starts with an arc where a friendship two generations
| ago directly lead to a grandsons death. It's a tool and trope for
| prose, but not apt for journalism.
|
| It'd be like an article about mr Pelosi's accident starting off
| with the Porsche company's founding and how that eventually
| resulted in drunken driving accident by mr Pelosi.
|
| There is lots to unpack and discover regarding the assassination
| of mr Abe but I feel this journalist is grinding some axe on the
| way there.
| xbar wrote:
| This is repeatedly reported news, not one journalist.
|
| According to Japanese police, the shooter claimed Abe's
| religious group association was the motive. At least two other
| papers have linked that group to the Family Federation
| (formerly Unification Church) and the Family Federation issued
| a PR newswire about the shooting yesterday after refusing to
| comment.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/09/shinzo-abe-bod...
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-tetsuya-yamaga...
|
| https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-07-10/mot...
|
| Here is the Church's statement:
|
| https://www.djournal.com/unification-church-statement-on-the...
| mellosouls wrote:
| _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 is quite striking in the UK and US how mainstream media will
| be remarkably coy about identifying the cultural background of
| some criminals while straight off the bat into condemnatory
| opinion pieces with others who will resonate more as bogeymen
| with their readers.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mellosouls wrote:
| It's directly relevant to the point (by a Western journalist)
| about Japan's "status as a democratic nation" which can
| presumably be turned right back on us.
| [deleted]
| asveikau wrote:
| Mandelmus wrote:
| Your thinly veiled accusation of racism notwithstanding, I
| don't think there's anything morally deplorable in thinking
| the media should help the public build a more statistically
| representative model of the world we live in, regardless of
| the cultural background of criminals. As an example, I don't
| think the demographic of young white guys fare too well in
| the mass shooter statistic, but omitting this reality isn't
| of public benefit.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| How is any of this relevant when they will usually publish
| a photo of the accused?
| asveikau wrote:
| Personally I think it's a huge red flag when people talk
| about "criminals" as a noun. There is no _Homo criminalis_
| distinct from _Homo sapiens_. Most people should not be
| branded as such a category for the rest of their lives.
| Many people are also falsely accused, and the system in the
| United States is especially bad at that.
| chmod600 wrote:
| That's a linguistic battle that's hard to win. Calling
| someone a "criminal" or a "magician" is equivalent from a
| language standpoint -- both are labels referring to a
| subset of people.
|
| Trying to be more precise to make a relevant point is
| more work and comes across as pedantic and annoying, like
| "birthing people". You can argue that it's more correct
| and better in some sense, but logic doesn't always win
| when it comes to language.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Hmm, if you meet a young black man, it's more likely _you_
| will be shot, but if you meet a young white man, it's more
| likely _a lot of people_ will get shot.
| frenet wrote:
| You can certainly have your opinions. They just aren't very
| relevant when the entire premise of this discussion is
| false. This clearly isn't being reported by a US or UK
| mainstream publication but what looks like a one man
| operation in Japan. This is very much the problem with
| hijacking discussion. Not only is there little to no
| context but the participants get so excited that they can't
| fact check even the two lines of justification.
| implements wrote:
| > This clearly isn't being reported by a US or UK
| mainstream publication but what looks like a one man
| operation in Japan.
|
| Oddly enough, I had LBC London News on (UK DAB Radio)
| earlier and they accurately reported the story - (Precis)
| "Man upset at Church donation killed Abe over believed
| links to said Church" - remarkably good news journalism
| for quite a niche radio station.
| damagednoob wrote:
| The media doesn't deal in statistically representative
| samples. It highlights notable events of the day and
| therefore by definition only deals with the extremes.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| brainphreeze wrote:
| DonHopkins wrote:
| mellosouls wrote:
| Actually, it's a problem on both sides of the media, though I
| admit I was interested to see if biases would be revealed in
| any responses...
| chmod600 wrote:
| The comment could also be read to mean that race is
| irrelevant to the crimes and shouldn't usually be reported.
|
| As it stands, the media is a bit selective in reporting the
| race of suspects, to the point of misinforming readers.
| John23832 wrote:
| (As a liberal black man)
|
| It's sadly anyone but Arabs ( in this post 9-11 America).
|
| You all know the shooters are white/black/asian (typically
| through social medial or other outside channels) in America,
| but it's not spoken.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > I wonder why that is.
|
| Because they have a preference for objectivity over being
| diplomatic?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| It's a German guy who is saying the press should make sure to
| report the race of the perpetrator/suspect even when not
| directly relevant to the crime, so that the public can draw
| inferences on which ethnic groups are most likely to commit
| crimes. A bit on the nose.
| archerx wrote:
| Maybe he wants everyone to be treated equally and not be
| treated differently based on their race in the news. I know
| it's shocking concept to most people.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Often it's about being Muslim. People understandably do
| want to know that because it shows something about what
| else people with similar beliefs might do.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| That's because the ethnicity of a criminal is usually not a
| relevant detail. It is not similar to the Japanese media hiding
| the motive of the assassination.
| xdennis wrote:
| > That's because the ethnicity of a criminal is usually not a
| relevant detail.
|
| Come on, don't be coy. There are many things which aren't
| relevant like where the criminal is from or how old he is.
|
| The reason they hide the ethnicity is because it helps
| racists to profile.
|
| The problem is that they go too far the other way, like
| labeling Kyle Rittenhouse, not just white, but a white
| supremacist without any evidence.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Age and location are necessary to avoid confusion based on
| name, and are much more effective at doing so than race
| which has the added problem of fueling racism.
| Mandelmus wrote:
| > That's because the ethnicity of a criminal is usually not a
| relevant detail.
|
| That's a big assumption rooted in a moral framework rather
| than in objective science.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| In a news report about an individual crime?
| Jensson wrote:
| Lets say a hate crime was committed against Jews. Do you
| assume it was a Nazi, or an Islamist? This pops up all
| the time in Europe, usually it is Islamists but sometimes
| it is Nazis, and that makes a huge difference when
| interpreting what the crime means.
|
| Or for this case, lets say the perpetrator was of Chinese
| origin instead of Japanese. Do you think that wouldn't be
| relevant at all?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| If the person was Chinese yes that would be an important
| consideration wrt the motive
| [deleted]
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Am I naive to believe that an article with such title would at
| least looked into assassins claims to begin with? Like how much
| was donated for starters, history of mental illnesses, gambling,
| and so on. Instead we start with Nixon and Kissinger
| [deleted]
| tkgally wrote:
| 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 broadcaster NHK do not, as of this moment,
| seem to have named the religious group yet; nor do they seem to
| have explained why they are not naming it.
|
| However, the group is named in online news stories by some of the
| weekly magazines [1, 2, 3] and will presumably be in their print
| editions within a few days. It's all over Twitter etc., too.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220710064519/https://www.daily...
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220710061754/https://gendai.is...
|
| [3]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220710062542/https://news.yaho...
| twelfnight wrote:
| Seems to me to be good policy not to discuss anything about
| assassins' motives, names or show photos to avoid accidentally
| glorifying the act or encouraging others who want to get
| attention. Why is the silence assumed to be a cover up instead
| of proper media etiquette?
| krzyk wrote:
| And that name is?
| haunter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church
|
| But it's also in the submission, literally the first
| sentence...
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| Thanks for linking to more information about it.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| It's also quite chauvinist to suggest that the major newspapers
| cannot arrive at the same conclusion about disclosure
| independently, and pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing
| information is inconsistent with democracy.
| ehvatum wrote:
| > 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.
| paulmd wrote:
| 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 shit - you can 't just go
| telling the whole world that Joe Q Public cheated on his
| wife, _even if it 's absolutely true_ because it's not a
| good idea for the panopticon to be pointed at the powerless
| like that.
|
| Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up here
| on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited free
| speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and even
| then it is not quite absolute. The rest of the world views
| freedom of speech as a right that needs to be limited and
| balanced like every other right.
|
| Everyone has frequently talked about how we shouldn't be
| having media broadcast the manifestos of these shooters and
| glorifying them, how the media should just suppress
| information about them and refuse to publish their pictures
| and only and talk about them in the abstract... isn't that
| exactly what is going on here? This guy killed the prime
| minister and you want to know exactly what his cause was in
| exacting detail...
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up
| here on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited
| free speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and
| even then it is not quite absolute."
|
| Yeah, I just got smacked down on here for suggesting that
| not sharing all the details, naming names, etc could be
| because they don't want to encourage copycats, and that
| the US could address some of it's violence via a law
| limiting the details they provide.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/
| yucky wrote:
| >even in the US there are still some state secrets that
| you cannot publish regardless of how true they are.
|
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The "powers that be"
| have gotten drunk on their ability to not only hide
| information from the public, but more often than not to
| muddy it by releasing floods of false information so that
| people don't know what is what.
|
| These are the same people we owe things like Operation
| Northwoods and MK-Ultra to, so they can't be trusted.
| krisoft wrote:
| > and even in the US there are still some state secrets
| that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are
|
| That is simply not true. There are many examples where
| USA newspapers published leaked secrets and the
| journalist were not convicted for it in any case.
|
| The Pentagon Papers come to mind as the most famous
| example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
| sacrosancty wrote:
| The claim was that there are _some_ secrets, not _all_
| secrets which is the claim you countered.
| krisoft wrote:
| Ok. There are no secrets "you cannot publish" in the USA.
| Prove it otherwise. Either by citing law, or even better
| by citing precedent.
| orangepurple wrote:
| "Born secret" and "born classified" are both terms which
| refer to a policy of information being classified from
| the moment of its inception, usually regardless of where
| it was created, and usually in reference to specific laws
| in the United States that are related to information that
| describes the operation of nuclear weapons.
| whatusername wrote:
| Looking at the DoJ's indictment of Assange -- they
| stated:
|
| The indictment also charges Assange for his posting of a
| narrow subset of classified documents on WikiLeaks that
| allegedly identified the names of human sources--
| including local Afghans and Iraqis who were assisting
| U.S. forces in theater, and those of journalists,
| religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political
| dissidents living in repressive regimes. Assange thereby
| is alleged to have created grave and imminent risk to
| their lives and liberty.
|
| (Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-
| release/file/1165636/downl... )
|
| That would appear to be a specific example of secrets
| that cannot be published?
| trasz wrote:
| Ever heard of Assange?
|
| (Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret among
| others; there is a ton of those.)
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| 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.
| moomin wrote:
| Britain's an interesting case, but I don't think it makes
| the point you think it does. Yes, there's a censor, but
| the real reason all the newspapers report the same thing
| at the same time is cultural a) newspaper ownership is
| concentrated amongst a very small group of people, most
| of whom are billionaires b) they employ people who they
| trust to do the right thing c) journalism in the U.K.
| operates a revolving door with the conservative party's
| communications division d) partly as a result of that and
| partly as a result of falling revenues, most journalist's
| idea of what good journalism is consists of asking two
| people what they think and reporting what they say e)
| this makes them extremely dependent on the lobby system,
| which is pretty similar to press clubs e) Blair set a
| precedent for cutting funding to the BBC if it said
| things it didn't like, and the current government hasn't
| hesitated to threaten to do it again f) this culture is
| so ingrained it has spread even to those publications
| that theoretically shouldn't be affected.
|
| So the situation in Japan is pretty similar to that in
| the U.K. You just need to identify the levers.
| simonh wrote:
| > c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door
| with the conservative party's communications division
|
| Actually the prime minister's press office, and to be
| fair Labour perfected this process thanks to Alastair
| Campbell.
| safety1st wrote:
| Not necessarily backing the decision of the Japanese
| newspapers here, but US politics is basically a circus of
| unsubstantiated allegations which are front and center
| because they get more eyeballs. Sensationalism is hardly a
| pillar of democracy. It's a scourge and the country would
| be better off if Fox, MSNBC, Twitter's apocalypse
| algorithms etc. were a little more reserved.
| hsn915 wrote:
| It's not really any different than the US.
|
| Lots of information tends to be "widely known" online to those
| who care to dig, but the mainstream outlets stick to some
| narrative that is best described as "half truth".
| duxup wrote:
| I find a lot of that information is in the mainstream
| media... just that you have to pay attention.
| yucky wrote:
| Yes indeed. And if you really want to go down a rabbit hole,
| test it out on the subjects that find the likes of CNN & FOX
| agreeing in lockstep. More often than not it's to hide the
| truth than to report it.
| svachalek wrote:
| It's interesting that even in US papers, the sudden trend of
| Russian oligarchs to become suicidal or murder-suicidal
| overnight is largely reported at face value, at best giving
| the context about how suddenly and frequently it is
| occurring.
| tootie wrote:
| Most mainstream press won't report things they can't prove.
| When they report on a Russian journalist falling out a
| window, they will usually mention that lots of opposition
| journalists have fallen out of windows and let readers draw
| conclusions, but we still have absolutely no direct proof
| they're being assassinated. I think news consumers have
| started to change their expectations and just really,
| really want pat answers fed to them rather than reading
| about what we actually know.
| russdill wrote:
| There's lots of information out there that's widely known
| that is true. There's also lots of widely known information
| that is untrue.
| noobermin wrote:
| Case in point, the death of Epstein.
| tootie wrote:
| The death of Epstein was reported based on the observable
| facts. Realistically, he probably killed himself and he
| probably never had any incriminating evidence on anyone to
| warrant a hit. The conspiracy theories are all 99%
| speculation. The fact that notable people travelled with
| him isn't proof of anything. We have some actual evidence
| against Prince Andrew and it's all gotten in the press. We
| have no proof on anyone or anything else beyond what was
| charged in court against him and Maxwell. Reporting
| anything else would be unethical and unprofessional.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious. What hidden but verifiable facts
| have been hidden from the public with respect to the
| Epstein death?
| spamizbad wrote:
| In the case of Epstein, journalists weren't allowed by
| their editors to do their jobs.
| ignoramous wrote:
| translate.google to en:
|
| [1] https://archive.is/4wu9v
|
| [2] https://archive.is/xhOAW
| Larrikin wrote:
| It was explained to me when I lived in Japan, that while there
| are many Japanese media companies that exist independently in
| Japan, they all have to go to one central government body to
| renew their licenses to exist. They get some leeway but it's
| it's not much
| oblak wrote:
| tkgally wrote:
| There is no licensing of the print or online media in Japan.
| However, there are a number of factors that effectively limit
| the freedom of many media outlets.
|
| The _kisha_ clubs [1], which control media access to
| government officials and the police, are restricted to
| reporters from major media organizations. The tabloid press
| frequently complains about those restrictions and use those
| restrictions as justification for their less savory reporting
| methods.
|
| The libel and privacy laws are fairly strict [2, 3] and have
| been tightened in recent years, making publications more
| hesitant to report negative or personal information about
| individuals, including politicians. Some religious groups
| have used those laws to suppress negative reporting; as soon
| as I noticed on Friday afternoon that the mainstream media
| weren't giving the name of the religious group, I wondered if
| fear of lawsuits was the reason. (I still don't know.)
|
| Extremist groups have targeted Japanese media, and have
| sometimes attacked [4] or killed [5] journalists, for reports
| that the groups didn't like about the Imperial family or
| historical matters. This can make journalists hesitant to
| raise controversial topics.
|
| The major newspapers are published by large conglomerates
| that have diverse business interests. The weekly magazines
| have, over the years, reported many examples of stories that
| were suppressed by their larger competitors because of
| conflicts of interest. An amusing one that I remember is when
| a magazine was not allowed to include the term _shogi daoshi_
| --literally, "falling over like shogi pieces"--in their
| regular advertisement in a daily newspaper; they wanted to
| use it to describe an accident where people were crushed in
| and killed in a crowd, but that newspaper ran a major shogi
| tournament and wouldn't allow the term _shogi_ to be used in
| a negative context. Some weekly magazines that frequently
| publish reports of salacious scandals about celebrities and
| politicians refrain from publishing similar reports about
| well-known writers, because their parent companies depend on
| work by those writers for other publications.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisha_club
|
| [2] https://kellywarnerlaw.com/japan-defamation-laws
|
| [3] https://www.omm.com/resources/alerts-and-
| publications/alerts...
|
| [4] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zun noZhen Xiang
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomohiro_Kojiri
| dmurray wrote:
| > An amusing one that I remember is when a magazine was not
| allowed to include the term shogi daoshi--literally,
| "falling over like shogi pieces"
|
| An amusing one on multiple levels. Standard shogi pieces
| don't fall over! They're not miniature statues like in
| Western chess, but flat reversible tiles [0]. It's like it
| was written by a Western journalist who needed to translate
| his idiom into Japanese.
|
| [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/
| 5c/Sh...
| [deleted]
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Western chess pieces don't fall over like dominoes
| either, since they're usually kind of rounded...
| hatenberg wrote:
| Western Chess, they got cowboy hats? Asking for a Persian
| friend...
| tkgally wrote:
| I don't have any shogi pieces handy--I'm more of a lapsed
| go player myself--but can't they be stood on their ends
| like dominos? Image searches for _shogi daoshi_ in
| Japanese yield a lot of pictures like this:
|
| https://www.photo-ac.com/main/search?q=Jiang Qi Dao
| shi&srt=dlrank&qt=&p...
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| In the US all radio and TV stations also have to get and
| renew licenses from the government to be allowed to
| broadcast.
| iso1631 wrote:
| And online people have to effectively renew a license from
| Google to broadcast
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Not really.
|
| TV station: You operate without a license or outside of
| its bounds, you've committed a criminal act. The
| government can use their monopoly on force to compel you
| to give up your resources (fines) or your freedom (jail
| time).
|
| Youtube: You break the terms of service and are no longer
| allowed to use their service.
|
| There are other video platforms, there are ways to self
| host video. No one needs a "license" from Google to get
| their video content available to the world.
|
| If you want to swim in Google's pool and get the benefits
| of hanging around the other millions of people in
| Google's pool, maybe it's a good idea not to take a ** in
| it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Google markets YouTube as a platform for everyone. Anyone
| can open an account. There is no membership fee, or
| political party affiliation required. Their advertising
| rates and revenue depend on having the largest possible
| audience. They present themselves as a "public square"
| and thus should be obligated to allow free speech as one
| has at a public square.
| ekianjo wrote:
| all these news organizations in Japan are nothing but
| government mouthpieces. When Abe was in power the journalists
| could not stop singing his praises and how smart the whole
| "Abenomics" was supposed to be.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| headsoup wrote:
| How is Biden historical already?
|
| 'actual good,' is that like the no true Scotsman of good?
| orwin wrote:
| It was a troll, re-read his comment.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| The Biden-Harris economic strategy is producing historic
| results: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
| room/statements-releases...
|
| Also he is the first president with a female black
| LGBTQI+ press secretary, He also appointed the first
| female four star admiral and nominated the first black
| female supreme court justice. He also has a historically
| strong mandate as more people voted for him than any
| other presidential candidate in history.
|
| I can go on but I think if you Google Biden and
| historical you will find many more examples.
|
| Also CNN made a list here
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/30/politics/historic-firsts-
| bide... and this was from before he even took office,
| which should be a good indicator of just how historic he
| is.
|
| And another list by people
| https://people.com/politics/here-are-all-of-the-historic-
| fir...
|
| Biden is likely the most historically significant
| president in the history of the united states[1].
|
| I think nothing is a better indicator of a robust
| democracy than press who recognizes greatness when they
| see it.
|
| [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I was thinking you were laying it on a bit thick and then
| I saw the kinds of responses you've been getting.
| Caboose8685 wrote:
| It almost feels like that account is trying to be another
| Titania McGrath [0].
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titania_McGrath
| andrepd wrote:
| It's funny because not only are you making the most un-
| original joke possible, you are also factually wrong (see
| sibling post).
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| Disappointing that this kind of exclusionary rhetoric
| gets play on HN.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| Being against hate and for protecting black and Trans
| bodies and birthing people is not exclusionary.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I'm a bit dulled to it these days, so that part didn't
| even register.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Exclusionary?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| You sure about that?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_2016_
| Uni...
|
| >> _' A 2018 study found that media coverage of Trump led
| to increased public support for him during the primaries.
| The study showed that Trump received nearly $2 billion in
| free media, more than double any other candidate.
| Political scientist John M. Sides argued that Trump's
| polling surge was "almost certainly" due to frequent
| media coverage of his campaign. Sides concluded "Trump is
| surging in the polls because the news media has
| consistently focused on him since he announced his
| candidacy on June 16".[21] Prior to clinching the
| Republican nomination, Trump received little support from
| establishment Republicans.[22]'_
|
| His own party wouldn't even give him the time of day
| until he was made inevitable by a fawning press gorging
| itself on easy ad dollars.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| Not sure how what you cites implies the media was fawning
| over Trump, if I recall correctly the coverage was not
| exactly positive, and I explicitly mentioned singing the
| praises of, not just reporting.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| That was going off of memory. I might be wrong about that
| part.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| 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 part the mainstream press are warriors for
| democracy and one of the reasons why US has such a
| healthy and vibrant democracy.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| monocasa wrote:
| There was also Clinton's campaign instructing the media
| to give Trump a disproportionate amount of coverage under
| the idea that trump would be easy to beat, or at least
| making him stronger would make whichever Republican won
| the 2016 primaries weaker. Didn't work out that way.
|
| https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-
| campaig...
| willcipriano wrote:
| This proves quite the opposite once you have a bit of
| context. This was the strategy of the DNC, they thought
| Trump would be easier to beat so they promoted his
| campaign.
|
| > How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately
| "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy
|
| > In its self-described "pied piper" strategy, the
| Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating
| extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to
| turn them into the new "mainstream of the Republican
| Party" in order to try to increase Clinton's chances of
| winning.
|
| > "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so
| that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to
| them seriously," the Clinton campaign concluded. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-
| campaig...
| [deleted]
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| It's not about "licenses to exist", but access to the press
| clubs (kisha clubs). Basically, if the government doesn't
| like what you print/say, you get frozen out the clubs and
| hence out of all government news.
|
| https://freespeechdebate.com/discuss/an-impregnable-
| fortress...
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Kinda like how the threat of revoking the press's access to
| the White House keeps them toeing the establishment line
|
| https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-
| passes...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| That worked well. /s
| evilsetg wrote:
| I like the model of ths German Bundespressekonferenz where
| an organization made up of journalists invites the German
| goverment for press conferences instead of the other way
| around.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundespressekonferenz#Organis
| a...
| OJFord wrote:
| Surely that can only work at the will of the government -
| if I'm the German chancellor and decide I don't like it,
| I can just tweet that I'll be making a statement outside
| my front door; the first time all the blogger hacks will
| show up and get a great scoop; the second time everyone
| will?
| Phlarp wrote:
| So instead a foreign company gets all that power?
| mnd999 wrote:
| That's the UK system. Almost all the press is owned by
| foreign billionaires.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well for one Twitter was just an example, more that that
| is what I imagine they would probably use than anything
| else, not central to the point.
|
| But also, I'm not saying it's better or whatever or
| making any sort of judgement? I'm just saying I don't
| think the media-led organisation _has_ 'all that power' -
| they'll just go where all the news is, because it's their
| job, and the government (currently) lets that be where
| they want?
|
| Twitter doesn't have any more power in that example, it's
| also just the avenue my hypothetical chancellor self
| chose to announce a press conference, he could have done
| it on Facebook, or Volksbook, or whatever, it's up to
| him, _that_ was my point.
| duckmysick wrote:
| Can the journalist organization exclude its members if
| they break ranks, so to speak?
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I'm going to contradict sibling and say "Yes".
|
| It's just a Verein (untranslateable, but let's say
| 'private association/club') with members.
|
| They can refuse to accept members for any reason, and
| they can kick out members for the reasons they themselves
| specify.
|
| Currently this section (SS14) reads they can kick out
| members "that are a danger to the purpose of the
| association or are harmful to its reputation or
| interests".
|
| So (read cynically) pretty much any reason.
| germanier wrote:
| Note that in this case, a two-thirds majority in the
| general assembly of members have to confirm the kick-out,
| which is judging by my experience in other associations a
| really high bar to clear.
|
| In any case, such a decision can be review by civil court
| as well whether it actually met the conditions laid out
| in their charter.
| cheshire_cat wrote:
| Tilo Jung[0] has bee annoying the government spokes
| persons with uncomfortable questions for years. I read
| that some other journalists are uncomfortable with his
| questions since they fear that the government might
| decide to just not show up anymore (everybody is aware
| that the Bundespressekonferenz is a quite unique
| arrangement) but they still let him show up and ask
| questions. He does really valuable work imo and publishes
| all Bundespressekonferenzen on his youtube channel[1].
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilo_Jung [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1WDP5EiipMQ__C4Cg6aow
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > I read that some other journalists are uncomfortable
| with his questions since they fear that the government
| might decide to just not show up anymore
|
| The thing in his early days was that he asked and
| "demanded" a proper answer. But often times the
| politicians don't want to answer to the question stated.
| Now you can waste everybody's time and ask again and
| again, without getting an answer (which is useful if you
| stream the event) or accept that there won't be an answer
| and move to the next topic (which is good if you want to
| write an article)
|
| But meanwhile Jung doesn't play that game that much
| anymore, but asks good and precise questions and more
| often then leaves it there.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| No.
|
| https://www.bundespressekonferenz.de/verein/satzung
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > It's not about "licenses to exist", but access to the
| press clubs (kisha clubs)
|
| Its the same in the UK.
|
| UK "political editors" working for the larger media outlets
| are granted lobby passes, which they guard like some
| precious gem stone.
|
| Lobby passes grant the journalists free access to certain
| parts of the Parliament buildings, in particular the lobby
| (hence the name of the pass !). It also grants them access
| to the Downing Street media briefings, which due to some
| obscure tradition, are always held behind closed doors.
|
| That's why many UK "political editors" ask such dumb limp
| questions of UK leaders. Its because they run scared of
| having their sacred lobby pass taken away from them.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > That's why many UK "political editors" ask such dumb
| limp questions of UK leaders
|
| To be fair, politicians still feel the need to get on TV
| and face Paxman and Andrew Netflix and so on, who are
| happy to take them to pieces whatever their personal
| political leanings. That plus PMQs and constituency
| duties, and I think UK politicians get grilled
| sufficiently...
| skripp wrote:
| I lived in London a couple of years in the early 2000s
| and me and my roommates used to watch Jeremy Paxman
| interview politicians and we were more or less in chock
| that he actually pushed them when they tried their usual
| non-answers.
|
| Now, we were quite young and didn't really know that much
| about British politics to get that much out of it but it
| was so refreshing to see a interviewer that didn't just
| back down like they do back in my home country.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Jeremy Paxman interview politicians and we were more or
| less in chock that he actually pushed
|
| Yes, Paxman was good at pushing politicians.
|
| But he was not a lobby pass holder either, AFAIK. So he
| had nothing to loose.
|
| Politicians with a grilling fetish came to see him on
| Newsnight knowing exactly what they would be facing.
|
| But he equally represented a generation of political
| journalists that seems to have been lost with the newer
| generation. The new generation of political journalists
| seems to have lost that "dog with a bone" sprit, even
| those who are free of the self-imposed restrictions of
| the lobby pass.
|
| The Johnson partygate, for example, came out of leaks
| rather than tough questioning of politicians. There are
| rumours around that some of the more high-profile lobby
| journalists were at said parties....
| donarb wrote:
| Which is why "Prime Minister's Questions" time is so
| valuable and entertaining.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| "if the government doesn't like what you print/say, you get
| frozen out the clubs and hence out of all government news"
|
| What happened to independent investigative reporting?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| They don't get invited and do their own investigation and
| reporting instead of paraphrasing government
| announcements.
|
| I think it's the same pattern in many countries, where
| there will be two different rythme: almost immediate news
| with official communication coming in near real-time, and
| a second wave of news from journalists who took more time
| to form an opinion/check what they want to publish. Both
| waves happen in big newspapers, independent ones only bet
| on the second wave.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This is the same in every country, including the US where
| entire agencies will just stop talking to you if you piss
| them off (especially police departments.) It's one of the
| ways we get all this propaganda even though we have a
| nominally "free" press.
| germanier wrote:
| Even they often try to cross the line, all German public
| agencies including police are required (by law in the
| states, by constitution for the federal level) to answer
| journalists' questions.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" This is the same in every country, including the US
| where entire agencies will just stop talking to you if
| you piss them off"_
|
| They only stop talking to you through official channels.
| There will always be leakers, disgruntled employees and
| others willing to talk to you anonymously or
| unofficially. Not to mention that you can talk to people
| and ask questions without announcing that you're a
| reporter. This used to be called investigative
| journalism.
| dmurray wrote:
| Investigative journalism is at an all time low at the
| moment: it's simply too expensive. Rephrased press
| releases from corporations, government bodies and
| celebrities sell just as well and the PR firms take full
| advantage of that.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not that frequent and it is difficult/expensive to
| verify those stories. Plus, anonymous/unofficial source
| is not much. To large extend, it amounts to gossip and a
| lot of it is basically unuseable.
| trs8080 wrote:
| Beat reporting and investigative journalism are very
| different "genres" of journalism.
|
| > They only stop talking to you through official
| channels. There will always be leakers, disgruntled
| employees and others willing to talk to you anonymously
| or unofficially.
|
| You cannot sustain beat reporting by relying on leakers
| and disgruntled employees. Furthermore, anonymous sources
| are not credible (ie, the news-consuming public largely
| does not trust them).
|
| Most of the time, simple facts need to be reported and
| the only way to do that is by talking to credible sources
| that have been developed over time. Not all journalism is
| investigative - what happens when you want to report on a
| new housing development but you've burned all your
| sources because you only talk to leakers and disgruntled
| employees? Or you're reporting on a crime and need to
| talk to some cops?
|
| > Not to mention that you can talk to people and ask
| questions without announcing that you're a reporter.
|
| City officials are pretty well trained to know when the
| person on the other end of the line is a reporter. Not to
| mention how incredibly unethical this is (won't even
| start on the legal issues here).
| nverno wrote:
| It's not "the same" at all. It's a matter of degrees,
| which make a huge difference.
| pessimizer wrote:
| With police departments, it might be worse. Imagine any
| local news outlet frozen out of police communications.
| The choice is to cease to exist, or to fire or demote the
| person that the cops want fired or demoted. If you live
| in the US, the reason you've seen 900 videos of cops
| dancing with children, opening fire hydrants, and handing
| out toys (on every network news show on the same day) is
| because they're press released by the cops, and there
| will be retaliation if the videos don't get on the air.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's no different at all. You'll be excluded from press
| clubs and conferences just the same. Identical situation.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| not really. Japan runs under a unitary government that
| has almost exclusively been controlled by a single party
| since the post-war era.
|
| The US is a federalized country with quite big cultural
| differences between states, and at least alternates
| between two major parties, and frequently shifting
| administrations. You can at most get canceled by one
| side. Japan is centralized and monolithic to an extent
| that really has no parallel in any other democratic
| country.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That's not really relevant. The causes are the same (they
| don't like what you say) and the effects are the same
| (you don't get to say it.) However you get from A to be,
| you get from A to B.
| SenHeng wrote:
| > _Japan is centralized and monolithic to an extent that
| really has no parallel in any other democratic country_
|
| Singapore?
|
| The press doesn't just toe the official line, they
| actively attack opposite viewpoints.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| The previous poster did say "democratic". Despite the fig
| leaf of elections, Singapore has been ruled by the same
| party since independence, which straight up _owns_ all
| licensed newspapers, TV and radio stations.
|
| Bonus points: the TV/radio wing has the delightfully
| Orwellian name of MediaCorp, and MediaCorp Radio at one
| point had the amazing slogan "MediaCorp Radio: Your
| choice!".
| pas wrote:
| so what makes Japan more democratic? (is there some power
| consolidation index that can distinguish between
| Singapore and Japan effectively?)
| aikinai wrote:
| The Japanese ruling party has actually lost power and
| smoothly transitioned.
| pas wrote:
| > The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its
| foundation in 1955--a period called the 1955 System--
| except between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to
| 2012.
|
| in theory there's no problem with this, after all if they
| represent the plurality ... just as in theory many
| political systems should work just fine.
|
| and it's certainly possible that this is what the vast
| majority of people there wants, so it might score 100% on
| "democracy", even if there are certain very obvious
| problems (let's say their insane justice system, or the
| simple fact that their population is both shrinking and
| ageing)
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Opposition candidates who might have a chance are not
| systematically made ineligible on bogus charge of tax
| evasion or contempt of court like in Singapore.
|
| As an example, John Tan was disqualified for standing as
| a candidate to the parliament in 2019 because he posted a
| Facebook post in support of an activist who posted than
| Malaysian courts were more independent than Singapore
| ones in trials involving politicians.
| nverno wrote:
| You can piss people/agencies off anywhere, true. But, the
| bar for what is expected to be tolerable
| behavior/reporting is vastly different.
| vt85 wrote:
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Trump actually had a reporter's white house press
| credentials revoked and a court reversed it.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-
| reporter/u-s-ap...
|
| The court does recognize the government has a right to
| prevent unruly behavior. But once it creates a forum with
| rules on who attends; it simply can not target those who
| disagree with it's speech.
|
| Yes, American agencies have stonewalled in the past but
| the 1st and 14th amendments do place restrictions and
| practices the governments must follow or their acts can
| be blocked and that American courts do uphold. As far as
| I know most countries do not have these practices.
| muyuu wrote:
| are we pretending that access to govt info and its
| subsequent quid-pro-quo is not a MSM dynamic basically
| everywhere?
| eloff wrote:
| Canada wants to implement this under the Trudeau liberal
| government. It's been a little disturbing to watch a Canadian
| liberal government take steps in the direction of
| totalitarian control since the beginning of the pandemic.
| When was the last time the political right has positioned
| themselves in opposition to the left in defense of free
| speech and individual rights and freedoms? Strange times.
| jhbadger wrote:
| 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.
| jrgoff wrote:
| 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.
| spinach wrote:
| 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
| jrgoff wrote:
| While I can see why that tweet leads you to categorize
| them as "woke", I don't personally see how that has
| anything to do with their actions matching their stated
| stances, particularly as it relates to free speech.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-
| speech.html is one such source.
|
| Note that the shift has been quite recent (more or less
| since 2017) and not uniform; the ACLU does still take up
| free speech cases, while avoiding others, depending on
| various things.
|
| Related, but not mentioned in the above articles, are
| tweets from prominent ACLU lawyers calling for banning
| certain books (see https://reclaimthenet.org/strangio-
| shrier-free-speech-suppre... for a reference, but this
| was quite widely reported). On the one hand, said lawyers
| have a right to their own opinions on their own personal
| twitter accounts. On the other hand, the ACLU never
| bothered to say that this opinion does not represent the
| ACLU organizational position....
| jrgoff wrote:
| Thank you - unfortunately I don't have access to the
| nytimes article (and am not willing to subscribe to get
| it). However, your comment did help me find other
| articles that seem relevant to this discussion.
|
| In case it is of value to others, one such article is
| https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/10/26/why-the-aclu-is-
| rig... - it definitely has a pro-ACLU slant, but I
| thought it did a reasonable job of explaining the
| dynamics of the recent discussion/shifts within the ACLU
| with respect to free speech
| cma wrote:
| The right campaigned on cancelling Kaepernick and right-
| wing religious universities are notoriously against free
| expression.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > modern left-of-center policy in general
|
| serious question: were "liberals" really very much "left"
| in the first place? maybe culturally left i suppose, but
| economically and politically?
| alsetmusic wrote:
| For those curious, the first article linked says it's the
| Unification Church (Moonies).
| riedel wrote:
| It really reminds me somehow of the police press relationship
| described in '64' (Rokuyon) by Hideo Yokoyama
| bamboozled wrote:
| Maybe, or maybe it's just becoming obvious Japan's "democracy"
| isn't functioning at the level we'd all hope for that scares us
| all a little bit?
| laurieg wrote:
| If you are interested in the media in Japan and how it chooses
| to report or not report news I recommend the book "Exposure:
| Inside the Olympus Scandal". It tells the story of loss hiding
| at Olympus. Especially interesting are the chapters about how
| difficult it was to get any news coverage of some extremely
| suspicious things.
| suction wrote:
| That and for a more general take on why Japan isn't the
| heaven-on-earth that weeaboos hold it up to be, I recommend
| "Japan - a reinterpretation" by Patrick Smith. It has a lot
| about freedom of the press and the Japanese media landscape,
| especially the infamous "Kisha Clubs" (self-censoring).
| ETHisso2017 wrote:
| Why aren't the major Japanese media outlets covering this angle
| before the polls close in Japan's upper house elections
| (today)?
| SllX wrote:
| Isn't it controversial whether or not he did have a
| connection? There is a value of free speech in Japan but it's
| not exactly like America's, and I think the Japanese media
| would mostly avoid stirring the pot immediately prior to an
| election, and especially for a claim that may be unfounded.
|
| I won't argue whether their approach is the right one or not
| and this is just my opinion, but that seems like that would
| be why the major papers wouldn't want to cover this angle to
| me.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Strange. I don't see how it could be more controversial
| than his well known links to Nippon Kaigi.
|
| I mean, the cult connection is only important for the fact
| that someone killed him for it. And I am going to guess
| that it tells you something about the deranged mind of the
| killer, and probably not much interesting about Abe.
|
| Edit: I mean, come on, "newsflash: prominent politician
| involved in dubious business or accounting practices", you
| could probably have safely assumed it :)
| suction wrote:
| It could be controversial because it's a Korean sect and
| Abe was a nationalist hardliner whose image was that he
| would make Japan "proud" again by refreezing relations
| with China and Korea.
|
| So if he had connections to a Korean sect, and knowing
| what sects do, the next logical step would be to assume
| that he was controlled by or at least open to Korean
| interests, which is the opposite of what people elected
| him for, and would be a major, major scandal for him and
| his party.
| [deleted]
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Isn't it controversial whether or not he did have a
| connection?
|
| Controversial like linking the Kashoggi's death to the
| Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman[1], but then
| participating to the G20 summit in Riyadh or selling them
| billions worth of weapons (including combat aircrafts),
| like nothing happened?
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56213528
| grapeskin wrote:
| Controversial in the sense that he's on video as a
| presenter in one of their events.
|
| It's as controversial as the My Pillow guy having a
| connection to a political party. We don't know whether he
| literally believes in what he's saying, but we do know he's
| being paid to speak for them.
|
| But whether this is the cult he was killed for is yet to be
| confirmed. He also had heavy involvement with Soka Gakkai
| through his alignment with the Komeito party. They also
| drain people of their cash.
| shusaku wrote:
| It's absolutely insane to me that people are criticizing the
| Japanese media over this. Why should we be amplifying a
| murder's message? Don't reward a man for shooting someone in
| the back.
|
| After every mass shooting in the US I see widespread
| criticism of the media for sensationalism and turning mass
| murders into stars. Yet when another country follows this
| very advice, they're criticized for a lack of free speech?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I would never criticize the media for indicating who did
| the killing, the weapon and how it was obtained, or the
| "mind set" (to the degree that is possible) of the killer.
| All of these things inform the populace. (And besides, does
| anyone think you could successfully suppress those?)
|
| But of course I am not the "widespread criticism" you refer
| to.
|
| It would be useful to point to the actual hypocrisy of a
| specific source/person -- where this source/person was
| critical of the U.S. media amplifying a murderer's message
| but critical of Japan's refusal to do so.
| fomine3 wrote:
| This. Usually calm people in Japan rage now about that news
| is slow. People should be calm even in this situation.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Knowledge and transparency is oxygen to a democracy.
| Without an informed populace you can not have an effective
| democracy.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Knowledge and transparency is oxygen to a democracy
|
| Democracy can wait a week or two when a man is murdered
| that way
|
| Freedom means also that you have to earn it, if people
| can't wait to speculate online about things that are
| still being investigated, they probably don't deserve it.
|
| ---
|
| What if they waited a bit more before putting Lee Harvey
| Oswald on the front page of every newspaper? Maybe he
| would still be alive and we knew a lot more about what
| really happened.
|
| What if Kennedy assassination happened today, with social
| media and the "pornography of violence"?
|
| Think about it.
| yucky wrote:
| >Freedom means also that you have to earn it
|
| Freedom isn't earned, authority is. Freedom is the
| default nature of man. Those in power who seek to limit
| freedom, must earn that right. And it can be quickly
| withdrawn.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Freedom is the default nature of man
|
| There's nothing natural in modern society.
|
| The only natural freedom is the freedom to survive.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The motives of a crazy person are far less important than
| a long list of important policy nuances though. Why give
| this one precedence in air time.
| Caboose8685 wrote:
| I agree with the theme of your message, but people won't
| be educated unless they seek it out themselves beyond
| just what the media spouts. That is all too sadly very
| rare.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's linked to too many hot button issues, and would have way
| more impact than just anger against a single cult.
|
| If it was in the US context I would compare it to an
| alternative muslim cult founded in China and supporting the
| Palestinian regime. If someone shooting a US politician was
| found vaguely linked to that cult, it would be wiser to wait
| for a strong connection with the crime instead of just
| throwing around the information and have everyone go wild
| with the implications they want.
| brightball wrote:
| 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 May 1954 under the name Holy Spirit Association for the
| Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) in Seoul, South
| Korea by Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012), a Korean Messiah claimant
| also known for his business ventures and engagement in social
| and political causes.[3][4][5][6]
|
| > The beliefs of the Unification Church are based on Moon's
| book Divine Principle, which differs from the teachings of
| Nicene Christianity in its view of Jesus[7] and in its
| introduction of the concept of "indemnity".[8] The movement is
| well known for its unique "Blessing" or mass wedding
| ceremonies.[9]
|
| > The Unification Church has been controversial, with some
| early critics calling it a dangerous cult.[10][11] It also has
| been controversial for its involvement in politics, which
| include anti-communism and support for Korean reunification.
| maire wrote:
| Moonies used to be a big deal at college campuses in
| California. When my husband and I went to Berkeley in the
| 1970s, the Moonies were everywhere. They did many
| questionable things before fading away.
|
| My husband is 4 years older than me - so he was not as aware
| of their recruitment practices. He said he was invited to
| dinner by a very attractive young woman who kept flirting
| with him all through dinner. She then invited him to a
| weekend retreat. He said he became suspicious and did not go.
| It was a good thing he did not go. By the time I went to
| Berkeley - we all knew about the retreats.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > She then invited him to a weekend retreat. He said he
| became suspicious and did not go
|
| great article about that (infiltrating the moonies in san
| diego)
|
| https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1980/may/08/cover-
| revere...
| flobosg wrote:
| Moonies were prevalent in Chile later on, during the late
| 90s. The press would refer to them as "la secta Moon" (the
| Moon cult).
| Larrikin wrote:
| What would happen at the retreat? Just indoctrination?
| jphsnsir wrote:
| What happened at the retreats? Quick search gave no
| answers...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep I remember the "Moonie" cult in the news from the
| 1970s. They seemed to fade out after a while, like most
| fads do. I had no idea they were still operating.
| bink wrote:
| They still own and publish the Washington Times.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times
| tootie wrote:
| Abe gave a speech at a Unification Church event
| commemorating 9/11 in 2021. The keynote speaker was
| Donald Trump:
|
| https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/14368663391136276
| 48?...
| ok123456 wrote:
| They also owned the University of Bridgeport until a few
| years ago.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe they don't want copycats.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Unification Church of the World Peace [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| Nobusuke Kishi was a class A war criminal hmmm
| cpncrunch wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
| batch12 wrote:
| > After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as
| a suspected Class A war criminal. However, the U.S.
| government did not charge, try, or convict him, and
| eventually released him as they considered Kishi to be the
| best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American
| direction.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| enqk wrote:
| I don't quite agree with amplifying the political or personal
| message of a murderer, as it seems like rewarding the act with
| publicity, encouraging more of it.
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| 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 money because you'd be supporting the
| late George Bush Sr's 2nd-favorite cult.
|
| They also own The Washington Times and United Press International
| (UPI).
|
| And True World Foods, which runs a major portion of the sushi
| trade in the US.
|
| Numerous other innocent-sounding organizations in many, many
| sports, interest groups, and industries.
|
| Net worth around $2 billion.
| donatj wrote:
| Replace "Moonie" with any mainstream religion and mention of
| race with the race such religion most widely applies to, and I
| hope the bigotry of this comment becomes far more clear.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Eh..not really. Moonie is a specific religious sect (and a
| horrible, vile, dim-witted one without sugar-coating). If you
| ask me, they should be singled out and massively shamed for
| their atrocities.
|
| Mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam have
| billions of adherents between them and aren't a single group.
| They're many sub-sets within them, many of whom aren't fond
| of each other, so you can't generalize with that case.
|
| Call it "bigotry"...but what else can we say about a "church"
| whose adherents bless their AR-15 and wear a crown of bullets
| [1]. It's not bigotry to be scared of such loons and the kind
| of havoc they can potentially cause.
|
| Religious freedom does not give people the authority to be
| nuisances within their community.
|
| 1- https://www.vox.com/2018/3/1/17067894/church-bullet-
| crowns-a...
| owlninja wrote:
| This article is specifically about Moonies though. I've also
| heard first hand accounts of that exact situation happening
| in the town where I went to college many years ago.
| donatj wrote:
| I'm not saying anything about the content of the article,
| the article is fine. I am remarking on the commenters
| bigoted tone, and how people let it slide because it's a
| religion they are unfamiliar with.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I think people feel more confident making generalizations
| about novel religious groups, even relatively large ones.
| And maybe especially novel religious groups with
| centralized control. Unification Church is basically the
| same age as Scientology.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I agree with you on "replace it with any religion" but I
| don't find it bigotry necessarily - I am averse to any and
| all religious influence on anything, and I'm happy to see it
| brought up to attention and awareness everywhere. As to the
| frequent Venn diagram overlap of locally predominant religion
| with corresponding country / nationality / ethnicity / etc,
| while that frequently the case, I agree we should focus on
| the underlying viral meme that's religion and not the
| confounding variable of nationality.
|
| I mean, I've lived in Canada for 20 years before I've
| realized that friendly kids asking for donation for salvation
| army in super markets are in fact members of a massive
| church. Things some people find obvious aren't well known to
| others.
| donatj wrote:
| > think twice before giving them money because you'd be
| supporting the late George Bush Sr's 2nd-favorite cult.
|
| > They also own The Washington Times and United Press
| International (UPI).
|
| > And True World Foods, which runs a major portion of the
| sushi trade in the US.
|
| > Numerous other innocent-sounding organizations in many,
| many sports, interest groups, and industries.
|
| Like if someone wrote _any of that_ about Jews, there would
| be no doubt in anyone 's mind that they were an anti-
| semite.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think one can be particularly legitimately concerned
| about religions that:
|
| * directly accumulate controlling ownership interests in
| key businesses.
|
| * use dubious fundraising and recruitment practices.
|
| * form complex webs of not-obviously-related entities to
| use in influence operations.
|
| * have acted as a pseudo-cult of personality of a figure
| in living memory.
|
| * are possibly abusive to their members in various ways.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Doesn't that cover most organized religions?
| mlyle wrote:
| Not really.
|
| > > * directly accumulate controlling ownership interests
| in key businesses.
|
| OK, there's things like Catholic healthcare and schools
| or the Adventists' various interests. They're mostly
| pretty clearly branded as being Catholic or Adventist
| affiliated. For the most part, this is not something
| religions do, though certainly there are areas of
| concern, like faith-affiliated substance abuse programs
| used to recruit the vulnerable.
|
| > > * use dubious fundraising and recruitment practices.
|
| OK, perhaps religious fundraising isn't perfect, but most
| religions do not engage in employing missionaries as
| quasi-slave-labor to panhandle funds from the public at
| scale. Of course, you can find an exception or two, like
| the Salvation Army.
|
| > > * form complex webs of not-obviously-related entities
| to use in influence operations.
|
| Doing this on anywhere near the scale of the Unification
| Church is basically unheard of.
|
| > > * have acted as a pseudo-cult of personality of a
| figure in living memory.
|
| Basically here you've mostly got the Unification Church,
| Scientology, and various kinds of "prosperity" churches.
|
| > > * are possibly abusive to their members in various
| ways.
|
| OK, you've got me here: a lot of religions dabble in
| abusing their members.
| fitzoh wrote:
| And if they wrote it about scientology it would be
| entirely uncontroversial
| stickfigure wrote:
| Most synagogues aren't cult-like. Quite the opposite,
| really. However, there definitely _are_ some forms of
| Judaism which deserve the label. Even my Israeli friends
| think the Haredi are batshit crazy. You would not accuse
| the people who made this film of being anti-semites:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_of_Us_(2017_film)
|
| It's fair to call out the wackiest religious cults, and
| Christendom offers many to choose from.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Fair.
|
| One of the tricky things about that is that "jew" is both
| a religion (presumed to be a "by choice affiliation") as
| well as ethnicity (less "by choice" affiliation), as well
| as culture and sometimes nationality.
|
| If I say "people who believe in loch Ness are gullible",
| that's viewed as ok in most places. Saying "Germans are
| gullible" is less likely to be true or acceptable. Saying
| "Christians are gullible" will depend on location - even
| most freedom of speech democracies will have blasphemy
| laws and cultures where they protect belief in Jesus in
| ways they do not protect belief in Yeti (I clearly _have
| an opinion_ on that :).
|
| Saying "Jews are gullible" will probably be viewed as
| anti semitic due to history, pattern, likelihood, as well
| as the confluence of what the word itself means. "Jew" is
| such a massive Venn diagram.
|
| FWIW Ultimately I believe (and I'm sometimes lonely in
| that) that intent rather than keywords are important. I
| chose to gave benefit of doubt to poster (perhaps
| mistakenly).
| lupire wrote:
| Of course. No one here is denying being an anti-Moonite.
|
| Just like when people here are anti-Google or anti-Apple,
| they aren't bigots.
|
| Moonies, Google, and Apple, and the Mormon Church and
| Catholic Church, and unlike Judaism, are specific
| business organizations with observable behaviors, not a
| personal belief and lifestyle.
| [deleted]
| umanwizard wrote:
| Jews are not comparable to the Moonies. They are not a
| single organization but rather a loosely related set of
| varying ethnic groups and religious practices.
|
| A better analogy would be to imagine people writing
| similar things about, say, the Satmar Hasidim. In which
| case it wouldn't sound anti-Semitic at all (although I'm
| sure the Satmar might try to claim it was).
| jmcgough wrote:
| 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 followers.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| A big reason they aren't as influential anymore is because
| Reverend Moon died, and there is currently a battle royale
| going on between his widow and some of his batshit insane
| kids [1] over his fortune.
|
| The True World Foods story is truly fascinating to me. Since
| slavery is illegal, better to get true believers to work long
| and hard nearly for free.
|
| 1. https://www.the-sun.com/news/us-news/2977349/inside-maga-
| sup...
| Terr_ wrote:
| This article [1] is a bit more informative on the history
| and soap-opera dynastic schism.
|
| I don't have firsthand knowledge of it all, but I do know
| some ex-Moonies who've spoken of their efforts to safely
| detach their still-adherent relatives.
|
| 1. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/530522/lengthy-
| lawsu...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They might not be as wealthy or powerful as other religious
| sects, but them being a cult is still of concern because by
| nature they are 1) secretive and non-transparent, 2) capable
| of fierce organizational discipline including taking
| advantage of members, 3) operate via proselytizing including
| underhanded means, 4) open to extremist and authoritarian
| beliefs. That's in the very nature of cults. Add that to
| their historically-potent political influence from the Cold
| War, and they're still worthy of investigation.
| throwaquestion5 wrote:
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| 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.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Is it a requirement for every Asian cult to own a few American
| newspapers? I know of two others
| edvards wrote:
| Can you tell about the two others?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| The Epoch Times is owned by Falun Gong. (They are
| apocalyptic/UFO/meditation cult, they have been banned in
| China and, if you believe their claims, organ harvested. I
| don't know how much to believe those claims, but China does
| keep a lot of things with organs weirdly secret. FG are
| present at every anti-Chinese protest. They also do the
| Chinese ballet which name I forgot now.... ah yeah Shen
| Yun)
|
| I don't know any other.
| ksaj wrote:
| In Toronto (probably also _everywhere_ ) FG tend to
| hijack parades by having 100s of marchers, regardless of
| what the parade itself is celebrating. I find it quite
| obnoxious, since it makes every parade except for Pride
| look like it's Falun Gong Day.
|
| They must pay a lot into the parades in order to even be
| accepted in such large numbers.
| fny wrote:
| They do 4th of July all over the US. It's quite
| impressive actually. Saw them recently in DC.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqHvBqLZghI
| ksaj wrote:
| Impressive because of the numbers. They don't care about
| July 4, just like they don't care about Canada day. They
| do care about taking up half the parade to make sure you
| notice them and are impressed by their numbers, though.
|
| There is no other reason they constantly try to outdo and
| outnumber everyone in parades that have nothing to do
| with religions or cults. That's why I refer to it as
| hijacking. It's not about them, but they absolutely make
| sure they are the ones you remember.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >They are apocalyptic/UFO/meditation cult
|
| I didn't see anything like you describe[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Central_teac
| hings
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >through a process of moral cultivation, one can achieve
| Tao and obtain special powers and a level of divinity
|
| If you read their books (e.g.
| https://falundafa.org/eng/eng/pdf/flg_en.pdf, just search
| for "David Copperfield"), they elaborate a bit more on
| the potential supernatural abilities that one can achieve
| through meditation.
| [deleted]
| netfortius wrote:
| Attended one of the shows in France, a few months ago.
| They politicized it right from the beginning, by having
| some bozos with English language fluency critize the
| Chinese government (not that they don't deserve it, but
| the way it was done sounded like far right American
| rhetoric). The show itself was vomit inducing, so I left
| after the first half an hour. As I was waiting outside
| for someone to exit, at the formal intermezzo mark, I
| couldn't help noticing lots of other people leaving the
| avenue. Doesn't surprise me to learn about the
| relationship with falun gong cult.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The tagline on their flyers used to be "5000 years of
| culture reborn"
|
| And I guess they rethought the subtlety because now it's
| "China before communism"
| pessimizer wrote:
| I read what I think is the Zhuan Falun years ago when the
| cult was newer and they posted documents online[*]. One
| of their beliefs that jumped out at me was that they
| believe that David Copperfield is an actual magician who
| is only pretending to be a stage magician, and was
| actually doing magic during his stage shows.
|
| edit: The Falun Gong have three OTA broadcast channels in
| Chicago, but Iranian official government news is too
| dangerous for me to be exposed to.
|
| * Looks like they still do at
| https://en.falundafa.org/falun-dafa-books.html
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Wow I did not know they did that Chinese ballet. I will
| be sure to never attend that now. I had checked the
| prices before and was amazed at how unexpectedly
| expensive it was.
| thedailymail wrote:
| I'm guessing the other one, besides Falun Gong and the
| Unification Church, is Olivet Church, a Korean messianic
| sect that bought Newsweek.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-
| olive...
| baybal2 wrote:
| hunglee2 wrote:
| no requirement, just smart business
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Last I checked American newspapers were not profit centers,
| so business is likely not the motivation - other than
| perhaps the value of controlling media in terms of
| propaganda, i.e. narrative control, which may be of value
| to other businesses owned by the entity. (Jeff Bezos buying
| the Washington Post, for example, is only a 'good business
| decision' in the context of providing a platform that
| enhances the business interests of Amazon (which seeks to
| avoid unionization) and AWS (which seeks expanded
| government contracts)).
| hunglee2 wrote:
| your second point was the main point in my admittedly
| overly cryptic comment.
|
| Narrative control + amplification power + even brand
| awareness = revenue opportunity. For example, The Epoch
| Times, the media mouthpiece of Falun Gong, promotes Shen
| Yun, the Chinese Dance troupe showcasing the 'beauty of
| China before Communism'. Propaganda and Profit need each
| other
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| Don't you dare besmirch The Epoch Times.
|
| Edit: People don't understand /s. Poe's law strikes again.
|
| Also, The Christian Science Monitor does a terrible job
| monitoring Christian Science and Christianity, but they do
| alright on science. They're absolutely flying off the handle
| with their obvious slant towards uncontroversial, neutral,
| factual reporting. Those bastards.
| xbar wrote:
| I hope no one misses the implied /s regarding CSM.
|
| The Christian Science Monitor is a model of great reporting
| in a time when few models exist.
|
| I am saddened when someone downplays a CSM report as biased
| because the listener assumes some form of Christian
| fundamentalism.
| ConstantVigil wrote:
| So, I'm not alone in wondering if they should be treated
| like bible thumpers, or not.
|
| Good to know. Also good to know they aren't bible
| thumpers, and just happen to be 'Christians' monitoring
| science, as per the name implies.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The name should be read as The Monitor, owned by
| Christian Scientists. Christian Scientist is a specific
| sect. Monitor here is like any other newspaper name, it
| could be The Christian Science Times, or Christian
| Science Observer
| pohl wrote:
| Like kevinmchugh pointed out, imagine parentheses to
| group "(Christian Science) Monitor". Christian Science is
| a set of beliefs that the "First Church of Christ,
| Scientist" adhere to.
|
| Stuff like the belief that disease is a mental error
| rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should
| be treated not by medicine but by a form of prayer that
| seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion
| of ill health.
|
| Sadly, this makes the appearance of the word "Science"
| even more confusing to the casual observer.
| ConstantVigil wrote:
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| 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.
| ConstantVigil wrote:
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Uh, no. Christian Science, like the Mormons or the
| Jehovah's Witnesses, are yet another American-made
| Christian sect founded in the 19th century by a
| charismatic leader:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Baker_Eddy
|
| Val Kilmer is even a member! They definitely have a
| quieter, less evangelical profile than those other sects,
| but they do appear in the background of American cultural
| life, with Christian Science Reading Rooms in many
| cities:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science_Reading_R
| oom
|
| That said, despite them being a new religious movement
| and having very suspect beliefs about medicine, this
| thread isn't the first time I've heard that their
| newspaper, the _Christian Science Monitor_ does very good
| journalism, outside of the health news reporting.
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| CSM is fantastic (yes, outside health adjacent of faith
| healing) in terms of long-form investigative journalism.
|
| They essentially don't have much to do with religion
| apart from including a page on religion and you wonder a
| bit about health topics.
| lupire wrote:
| maire wrote:
| I found this list of companies affiliated with the Moonies
| (many defunct).
|
| https://culteducation.com/unif121.html
|
| Here is an interesting quote by someone who ran two of these
| businesses in the SF bay area.
|
| "'With no labor costs and people willing to work 14 to 15 hours
| a day, you can undercut anybody' he said. Scales said that when
| he ran the Aladdin restaurants, employees signed over their
| pay-checks to the personal slush fund of West Coast church
| leader"
|
| The article was from 1977 - and the Moonies tried to reform
| themselves later, but at that time they were slave labor
| businesses. Moon was able to shield his practices using his tax
| exempt status as a religious organisation.
| [deleted]
| xbar wrote:
| They don't own the Canadian Globe and Mail which repeats some
| of the comments about the media in Japan and highlights some
| questions about the Abe/(Moonie aka Unification Church aka
| Family Federation) relationship.
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-tetsuya-yamaga...
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| The Spiegel didn't have much good to say about Abe either.
| The first article on their front page (when news of his death
| became known) was not a nice obituary. It might also reflect
| the huge gap between the way Germany responded to WWII and
| the way Japan did.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/shinz-abe-nachruf-der-
| japanis...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Articles like this are why I come to HN.
| [deleted]
| achow wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| Shinzo Abe was associated with a religious group 'Church of
| Unification'... that motivated Tetsuya Yamagami to target and
| kill Shinzo Abe.
|
| Yamagami told investigators that he blamed a "religious group"
| (i.e. the Unification Church) for inducing his mother to donate
| so much money that it bankrupted the family. He initially
| prepared to kill a church leader, but gave up after deciding it
| was too difficult. Yamagami then turned his focus on Abe, whom he
| was aware promoted the church at some level.
| pppq wrote:
| swarnie wrote:
| Did you roll a new account just to justify murder?
| pppq wrote:
| No.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Don't let fear control you. You're (presumably) not part of
| a cult and (presumably) have no intention of becoming part
| of one. (Presumably) none of your social groups are on the
| verge of being labelled one by the general public.
|
| Whether or not a given killing is morally wrong is
| undecidable. Obviously, sometimes killing one person saves
| many people.
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| Abe was not supposed to be here, his speech was planned to
| happen in another city but instead it was decided to go to Nara
| the evening before. The killer couldn't have planned to kill
| Abe.
| innocenat wrote:
| The change in plan was supposedly announced using speaker car
| in Nara that same evening, and was also posted by various
| people on social media.
| akg_67 wrote:
| According to NHK TV News, shooter went to Okayama the day
| before where Abe made campaign speech. But as the speech was
| at a auditorium and Abe didn't mingle with crowd after speech
| and left right away, shooter didn't have the chance. Shooter
| found out online that evening about Abe's visit to Nara.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The killer could have gone anywhere Abe was?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not without outside help, and there is no evidence of that
| so this is quite speculative. I don't think it is possible
| for an individual to track a high ranking former official
| like that without being noticed so personally I see this as
| coincidence rather than anything else. And that may well
| explain the reluctance to go further in their statements by
| the media, they are likely just waiting for the results of
| the investigation.
| freemint wrote:
| He probably took a train.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Not without outside help
|
| Why not? Wasn't it public knowledge that Abe would be
| speaking there? At least with a few hours of notice?
| ncann wrote:
| > I don't think it is possible for an individual to track
| a high ranking former official like that without being
| noticed so personally
|
| In this case Shinzo Abe was doing some campaigning for
| his party, so obviously his destination must be
| communicated beforehand on the news so that people know
| to show up.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Isn't this nearly identical to the real life events journaled
| by a reporter in Tokyo from the 90s?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Vice
| permo-w wrote:
| besides being about crime in Japan, I can't see any
| similarities in the article
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| permo-w wrote:
| the words you used were "nearly identical". if you
| squint, there are some very general passing similarities.
| if your original comment had said that this shares some
| themes with Tokyo Vice, I don't think you'd be getting
| downvoted
| dav_Oz wrote:
| 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 and 2022)]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The U.S. had John and John Quincy Adams and William Henry and
| Benjamin Harrison. Al Gore was the son of a Senator, and John F
| Kennedy's family had numerous high-profile politicians,
| including his father being US Ambassador to the UK. This is not
| a new development. Not saying it's good, just that it's not
| new.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Not a G7, but India notably is the most populous democracy in
| the world: Rajiv Gandhi, 6th Prime Minister of India, son of
| Indira Gandhi who was 3rd Prime Minister of India, who herself
| was daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the 1st prime minister of
| India.
| fb03 wrote:
| basically a glorified monarchy, then, since rich families
| have access to better ads/PR around their candidacies
| umanwizard wrote:
| Rajiv Gandhi's wife Sonia and son Rahul are also major
| political figures in India.
| [deleted]
| danielodievich wrote:
| This situation is incredibly well covered by the book that I
| just finished called The Aristocracy of Talent - How
| Meritocracy Made the Modern World By Adrian Wooldridge. It is a
| riveting read covering the history of how power was passed
| through (father->son) for a long time, how it changed with
| meritocracy in last 200 years and how it is currently going
| back, with a twist. Great review https://www.city-
| journal.org/review-of-the-aristocracy-of-ta.... A worthy and
| very relevant read for current troubled times
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's a disturbing trend and indicative of failing health /
| vibrancy of political systems. Same with running Hilary
| Clinton.
|
| Half of the entire point of the democratic turn in western
| states after the enlightenment and the French revolution was to
| attempt take power away from powerful families and abolish
| heritable power.
|
| I found it very alarming when Trudeau Jr was plucked out of
| relative obscurity and turned into a political figure here, and
| I found it quite absurd that he won with hardly any experience
| or qualification beyond his family name.
|
| Especially when the other centre-left opposition candidate at
| the time (Mulcair&the NDP) was very strong, an extremely
| competent opposition leader with strong support in Quebec, a
| long political history and a strong base, and the NDP were
| polling in majority territory prior to (and in the early part)
| the election. Honestly, I'm still bitter about that election
| and its results. I think it's actually turned out disastrous
| for Canada.
| freeopinion wrote:
| > 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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 chauvinism, its
| expanding federal powers, its imperial ambitions (both
| internal to the Americas and then even further abroad after
| WWII), its history with slavery and racial discrimination,
| etc.
|
| It's a contradictory country. On one hand having some of
| the most radical and egalitarian motive forces, and being
| earlier to the democratic impulse than most of the west. On
| the other hand having ossified authoritarian impulses built
| deep into its system.
|
| I think you'll find more healthy democracies in western
| Europe and Canada, though they don't have the same radical
| liberal (small, classical l) ideological underpinnings.
| zopa wrote:
| > 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.
| ep103 wrote:
| You can add Trump to that list as well, though it isn't a
| genetic inheritance. Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream
| lays out in detail how intertwined the Trump family has been
| in conservative national politics for ages
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Politicians don't really need to be good at policy. They have
| people to do that. They just need to be charismatic - able to
| capture the imagination of a constituency, and able to
| persuade other politicians to support their platform.
|
| Of course it'd be nice if our politicians were well-educated
| in the details of the policies they are championing, and if
| they could independently reason about the pros and cons, but
| realistically that's not what they're there for. They're like
| the sales guys at work - they might have some personal
| interest in techy details, but it's not what they're hired to
| do or what they excel at. They're hired to make the sales,
| not the product.
|
| I think the party strategists who picked a pretty face and a
| familiar name to represent the party did a decent job.
| Trudeau continues to have the confidence of most of his
| party, which is why he's still in the leadership position.
| He's clearly inoffensive enough that he can maintain support
| inside the party while also not igniting enough of a backlash
| amongst the voting public to indisputably defeat his party in
| 2021. He might be a milquetoast character representing an
| ideologically unadventurous party, but perhaps that's all
| he's meant to be?
| im3w1l wrote:
| Politicians need to pick skilled policymakers. This can be
| done either by being good at policy themselves so that they
| can identify this skill in others, or by having above
| average people skills so they can identify it that way.
| eloff wrote:
| Trudeau's policy picks were to check boxes on unwritten
| gender and race quotas. They are unlikely to have been
| the best people for the positions, because that wasn't
| the criteria being applied. Some people might take
| umbrage at me calling it out like that, but it sure looks
| like that's what actually happened. It was affirmative
| action to score political points.
|
| I don't like or agree with affirmative action as a
| policy. It's slapping a bandaid on the problem without
| addressing root causes. It's demeaning to the people
| selected, and it's discrimination on constitutionally
| protected grounds of gender, race, sexual identity, etc.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Frankly most of Trudeau's initial cabinet picks were just
| Chretien era loyalists.
| Jensson wrote:
| People tend to value skills they themselves possess. If
| you have a leader with good technical skills then he will
| probably pick people with good technical skills. So
| socially competent leaders look for socially competent
| underlings, leaders who got there via nepotism probably
| applies nepotism as well when choosing etc.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Honestly right now it feels like the Liberal Party is
| completely asleep at the wheel and there's a total absence
| of leadership at the moment and lots of ministerial files
| seem completely unmanaged or poorly managed.
|
| They were able to ride out the pandemic with some overall
| reasonable policies, and most of the stuff that annoyed
| people fell on the provinces.
|
| But they're clearly having a hard time transitioning now,
| and the Singh giving them a blank check has made them extra
| complacent. The stuff at the airports on its own is
| inexcusable. ArriveCAN needs to go. They need to respond
| boldly to this Rogers fiasco from Friday. They feel
| entirely flat footed to me.
|
| The expiration date is all over Trudeau and he needs to do
| the right thing and GTFO. And he needs to do it in a way
| that doesn't stiff Freeland and leave her in a Kim Campbell
| or Kathleen Wynne or Paul Martin type position.
|
| He needs to announce his resignation ASAP and call a
| leadership convention even if it's a coronation for
| Freeland.
|
| Singh I think has cost the NDP pretty much almost all their
| seats in the next election by propping Trudeau up right
| now. I have always voted NDP but I don't know what I'll do
| next time around.
|
| I say this as a left wing voter who doesn't want to see the
| Conservatives in charge. But every day they hold on they're
| just giving the Conservatives more momentum, even without a
| leader.
|
| I think when strategists look back they'll see Trudeau as a
| mistake. It got them power, but he was no Chretien or
| Trudeau Sr. He has been weak on policy and on leadership.
| And it will cost them in the long run. They blew their 3
| gov'ts by basically getting almost nothing actually done on
| all their files they were so boldly proclaiming. It reminds
| me a lot of McGuinty's term: at the end most of the
| problems created by Mike Harris still hadn't been reversed.
| I feel the same way about this gov't and the Harper years.
|
| CO2 Emissions? Up. A lot. Indigenous reconciliation? Nope.
| Clean water to all reserves? Nope. And what they _have_
| accomplished (small carbon taxes, subsidized daycare) seems
| very vulnerable to immediate reversal on day one of a
| conservative gov 't.
| atwood22 wrote:
| I can tell you're very passionate about these issues. I
| think you're falling into a trap, however, that has
| basically consumed the U.S. and all but ensured its fall
| from grace. I live in the U.S., but spend a large amount
| of time in Canada (3 months of the year). Canada is a
| great country compared to the U.S. Income inequality is
| much lower than in the U.S., you have decent health care,
| a sizable "blue collar" industry, the social fabric is
| strong, the people are nice, the country is stable, the
| nature is beautiful, etc. etc. etc.
|
| While Canada certainly has problems, I think it's
| important to remember that while things can certainly be
| better, that doesn't mean things are bad. The Rogers
| incident, for instance. It would be better if the
| incident didn't happen, but is really not worth being
| angry over. In the U.S., people seem to have forgotten
| this and began to get angry over why things weren't
| "better" even though things were really good. This
| divided the country, allowed a large percentage of the
| population to be controlled by outrage, and the aftermath
| is playing out right before our eyes. Before getting
| angry, try to identify all the things you have to be
| grateful for.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I don't want Canada to be mediocre; but it is. It has
| amazing potential as the multicultural, less
| dysfunctional, more socially compassionate alternative
| North American state.
|
| But we have -- since before our confederation -- been
| dominated by insular and mediocre monopoly interests.
| From the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Company to Rogers and
| Bell. From the Family Compact to the insular board rooms
| of Calgary's oil sector or Bay Street. A set of local
| self-connected classes that circle around the same elite
| private schools and family parties.
|
| Yes, our health care system has advantages over the US.
| But it's a system heavily rationed and under crisis
| because of waves of abuse and a lack of will to reform.
| I've been waiting since February for an MRI for a knee
| injury I got skiing, and I only haven't ducked south to
| Buffalo to get it done in the US because I didn't have
| money coming in until recently.
|
| That's a minor inconvenience though compared to the state
| of our emergency rooms right now.
|
| I'm passionate about these issues because I think Canada
| can be way better, especially if the point of comparison
| is not the US as a whole; but individual states or
| various western European countries (esp Scandinavia)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The issue is that things are getting worse and politics
| are decaying. Eventually this will lead to the same thing
| as what happened in the US. Being a milquetoast centrist
| and forcing yourself not to care won't help prevent that
| when things are actually getting worse either in
| actuality or in perception.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| I don't think jumping onto the outrage bandwagons will
| prevent it either -- and in fact only deepens the problem
| by making yourself more susceptible to manipulation.
|
| I think most people would be better served to recognize
| that their sphere of influence is a lot more local than
| their social media voices would lead them to believe.
| Being a positive influence for your family, friends and
| coworkers has far more consequential effects than some
| cheap tweet that somehow went viral 3 years ago and only
| added well-stated validation to an issue supported by
| people who already made up their minds.
|
| Politics might become ground into the dirt, but it's
| always been strong relationships that hold together the
| social fabric and prevent radicalization.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I disagree regarding Hillary Clinton, I think it's a
| disservice to her academic and professional accomplishments.
| She has an impressive academic record at Yale while getting
| her JD, was a very popular senator in NY, and was widely
| respected SoS. She is far more qualified than most
| presidential candidates and probably more qualified than her
| husband. I know she is divisive and I'm going to be
| downvoted, but all those accomplishments are factual and I
| left things out. I wish people would pause and reflect about
| why they dislike her.
|
| I also disagree with you about Trudeau, almost to the point I
| would characterize your description of him as false. He
| started in the HoC 15 years ago, took that to a leadership
| position in a failing Liberal party and revitalized them. I
| think it's more problematic that Harper led a lobbying group
| for several years.. I am curious what you think has been
| disastrous? (never mind, I see your sibling comment) I think
| he is actually impressively aware of the political
| coordination with the American and Canadian right-wings.
|
| If I'm understanding you right, it's more of a problem with
| machine politics, and I'd agree with you. The solution has
| always been restrictions on donations, advertising, and
| otherwise limiting the influence of money on politics but
| that fight has mostly failed.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I agree Clinton actually has a fairly impressive record.
| But so did plenty of other people.
|
| My point remains regardless: it is corrosive to democracy
| to let power consolidate in family power centres. Many
| kings and emperors of antiquity were very competent. And
| successful powerful families cultivated competency at
| ruling through elite education and patronage etc. But it
| was still a terrible form of government. Not the least
| because it becomes self-serving over time, but also because
| of its injustice: all the very competent people passed over
| because they did not have the right name or connections.
|
| Having a healthy democracy (literally: "people's rule")
| requires us to explicitly counteract concentration of power
| in lineage systems, party bureaucracies, and corporate
| dominance. Of these family lineage is one of the easiest to
| spot.
|
| Yes, we've always had this. No, it's not a good thing. And
| we need to actively counteract it, even if it means passing
| up very _competent_ individuals.
|
| I liked Herbert's books, I don't want to live in the Dune
| universe :-)
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I agree with you on just about everything you said :)
|
| I would probably have a slightly different nuance to my
| interpretation of the nature of power centers. I think
| that term limits counteract this pretty well for
| individual families and politicians. I'm more concerned
| about influence organizations and the individuals and
| families that fund them, like Heritage. They have
| enormous influence, don't disclose funding, and are
| completely unelected.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Re: term limits. if we're permitting family name
| marketing and dominance, that's irrelevant. Interests
| will simply rule through the next person in line in the
| family.
|
| Also, in the last two centuries of the western Roman
| Empire there was a new emperor every decade or less.
| Short terms did nothing to stop the authoritarian and
| tyrannical (and dysfunctional) nature of that rule.
|
| Sufficiently powerful individuals will make term limits
| disappear anyways. (See Putin, etc.)
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| You get automatic name recognition by being the child of a
| former leader, and that applies even if the former leader was
| unpopular. The hardest thing in national politics is probably
| becoming, essentially, _known_ in the first place, so they
| start with a colossal advantage.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| This, and I'd imagine politics is like anything else: you
| would really benefit from having people who've been there
| before to help you navigate. It's the same reason why a lot
| of children of pro athletes become pro athletes.
| confidantlake wrote:
| I imagine that genetics is probably the biggest reason for
| athletes.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| It's an important reason, but being connected enough to
| get noticed and getting the right instruction to succeed
| are also major pieces of the puzzle.
|
| https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/left-out
| arunc wrote:
| Not just G7, it's so common in many democratic nations. Wonder
| if anyone did a study of democracy and nepotism.
| rasz wrote:
| Speaking of family cronyism, cults and assassinations lets not
| forget SKorea Park Geun-hye and her father Park Chung-hee.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| This happens all over the world. The new president of
| Philippines is the son of a former president. In Pakistan two
| members of the Bhutto family have been PM and another was
| president. In Chile there was the Allende family, in America
| there is the Kennedys and the Clintons and dozens more examples
| below the presidency.
|
| I don't think it should be surprising that politicians can have
| family members who also make a career in politics. The same
| thing happens with public figures like actors, musicians and
| sports people. But it also happens with doctors and lawyers and
| soldiers and police and bakers and plumbers and hair stylists.
|
| Although there are plenty of people who grow up to do something
| different from their parents, there is definitely motivation to
| "follow in the footsteps". If nothing else, you can probably
| leverage a built-in support network.
|
| The question that's important for democracy is if it's possible
| for someone to break in to a political system if they are not a
| member of a pre-existing dynasty. So far I think in most
| countries that is still the case. Certainly it's better than
| feudal times.
| flobosg wrote:
| > In Chile there was the Allende family
|
| A much better example would be the Frei family, with both
| Eduardo Frei Montalva and his son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle,
| having served as presidents and several other members having
| different political positions. Frei Montalva, by the way,
| preceded Salvador Allende.
| savanaly wrote:
| It's important to keep in mind that this might be less sinister
| than it first appears (or more...there's that interpretation
| too). The "Great families" idea reaches beyond politics into
| science and art as well:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-
| great-f....
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Thought provoking. I would love to see that article extended
| to include artists - e.g. musicians like Johann Sebastian
| Bach, whose father Johann Ambrosius Bach was a violinist
| employed in Erfurt (who was twin brother to Johann Christoph
| Bach another great Baroque musician). These brothers were the
| sons of Christoph Bach, court musician in Germany. On the
| descendent side, Johann's fifth child and second surviving
| son Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (C. P. E. Bach) - the "Hamburg
| Bach" - was a musician and influential composer. His brother,
| Johann Christian Bach, or the "London Bach" (the 18th child
| of Johann Sebastian!), was music master to the Queen of Great
| Britain. There's more [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_family
| filoeleven wrote:
| I see that P.D.Q. Bach is still being ignored and treated
| as some kind of joke. The Wikipedia article doesn't even
| mention him.
| chongli wrote:
| Wikipedia does have an article on P.D.Q. Bach [1]. Do you
| have any sources to contradict the article's claim that
| he's a fictional character?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Q._Bach
| filoeleven wrote:
| Nope. Notice that I didn't call his status unwarranted.
| My intent wasn't to trick anyone; I just couldn't pass up
| replying to a post that plays so perfectly into the
| character's creation myth.
|
| But if you're one of the exceedingly rare HNers who might
| enjoy "orchestral musical comedy" now that you know it
| exists, he's worth a listen. This piece is more like
| sketch comedy than his others, so is more generally
| enjoyable even if you're not an orchestral music nerd.
| https://youtu.be/MzXoVo16pTg
| geysersam wrote:
| 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.
| odiroot wrote:
| Singapore is even more interesting with Lee Kuan Yew and Lee
| Hsien Long.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's especially crazy considering who Nobusuke Kishi was, and
| the things he did.
| tartoran wrote:
| Known for his exploitative rule of the Japanese puppet state
| of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was
| nicknamed the "Monster of the Showa era" (Zhao He noYao Guai
| ; Showa no yokai).[1] Kishi later served in the wartime
| cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo as Minister of Commerce
| and Vice Minister of Munitions,[2] and co-signed the
| declaration of war against the United States on December 7,
| 1941.
|
| After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a
| suspected Class A war criminal. However, the U.S. government
| did not charge, try, or convict him, and eventually released
| him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a
| post-war Japan in a pro-American direction. With U.S.
| support, he went on to consolidate the Japanese conservative
| camp against perceived threats from the Japan Socialist Party
| in the 1950s. Kishi was instrumental in the formation of the
| powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) through a merger of
| smaller conservative parties in 1955, and thus is credited
| with being a key player in the initiation of the "1955
| System", the extended period during which the LDP was the
| overwhelmingly dominant political party in Japan.[3][4]
|
| As prime minister, Kishi's mishandling of the 1960 revision
| of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty led to the massive 1960
| Anpo protests, which were the largest protests in Japan's
| modern history and which forced him to resign in disgrace.
|
| [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
| Smithalicious wrote:
| I don't think it's that weird. You wouldn't think much of a
| famous cook being the son of another famous cook, or likewise
| for a famous athlete, chess player, religious leader, etc. A
| child is influenced by their parents through both nature
| (genetics) and nurture (childrearing).
|
| Of course stuff like connections, name recognition, favors and
| backroom deals are a thing as well which are various levels of
| bad and preventable.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| There's different ways to think about it but it's pretty rare
| for both a patent and child to be great athletes, at least in
| the same sport. It happens, there's exceptions.
|
| Michael Jordan's sons didn't play professional basketball.
| For elite sports, having an elite athlete parent has low
| predictive power.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Pro athletes beget pro athletes All. The. Time.
|
| Cherry picking some of the NBAs MVPs, you might not
| remember Dell Curry[0], but you probably know one or
| both(!) of his sons who play in the NBA. Or there's Joe
| Bryant[1] whose son eclipsed his career in the NBA.
|
| Or, here's a fun sport switching family. Sometimes the
| athletic gene is so strong, four of the great-grandsons go
| pro.[2]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Curry [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bryant
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Gronkowski
| jomjomv wrote:
| Not on G7 of course but you should check Greece.
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(page generated 2022-07-10 23:01 UTC)