Monday, February 15, 2016

Censorship Escalates in Japan




Japan continues on slippery slope to fascism through censorship and intimidation:
Communications minister draws outrage over ‘threat’ to broadcasters, The Asahi Shimbun, February 09, 2016, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201602090074

Amid complaints that she’s threatening freedom of speech, communications minister Sanae Takaichi repeated her assertion that the government can legally shut down broadcasters that continue to air “biased political reports.”

The controversy started at the Lower House Budget Committee on Feb. 8, when Takaichi, a close associate of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was asked if a broadcaster could be ordered to suspend its operations simply for showing a report critical of the administration.

“We cannot promise not to take any response when a broadcaster shows no improvement and repeatedly airs (politically unfair news reports) despite (the ministry’s) administrative instructions,” she said.

RELATED BLOG POSTS

Majia's Blog: Japan on Way Down Slippery Slope of Fascism




7 comments:

  1. Fascist, oligarchic and plutocratic governments seem to amount to the same thing. Wealth married to coercive power. Three different points of view of the same thing. By holding regular elections Western governments manage to avoid the stigma that nations which have long serving leaders acquire. The last four presidents of the US divide evenly into Democrat and Republican yet seem pretty much the same on most issues. Each has managed an aggressive war and violated various Geneva Conventions -- in fact I believe since WWII President Kennedy alone avoided doing so which is probably why he was assassinated. There is quite a fine film "The Conformist" based on a novel by Alberto Moravia and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which tells the story of a man serving the fascist Italian gov of the late 1930's. At that time fascism was rather popular even in the USA. I certainly detect in much of what Obama says and does the traits of a good fascist. The kill list; his use of drones; his contempt of Congress and the Constitution; his persecution of journalists; etc. He seems oblivious to the environment apart from his obsession with the climate. He clearly feels like he deserves a great deal more power and control than he has. Exactly what is it that differentiates the USA from National Socialist Germany of fascist Italy or many other nations regularly condemned by the media? Not our prisons; not our reluctance to use military force or our fondness for torture. We might formerly have pointed to the Bill Of Rights but those ten amendments have been worn down to the point where the 4th for example is a joke. And don't carry much cash or the police will take it from you since you might be a drug dealer. Don't deposit too much cash unless you are a drug dealer! Say the wrong thing on line and get put on a list as a domestic terrorist? We are being squeezed though perhaps less than the Japanese.

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    1. Agreed we are being squeezed and everyday it seems to get incrementally worse with some new extension of state and corporate power over our lives.

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    2. Yes but don't you and william think its is reaching a crumbling point Majia? Jerry Brown keep on promising to do something about escalating crime rates in citie in California. He never does, and it is only getting worse. That is because they cannot do anything as we discussed under your Recession Looms article. So they are its like trying to sqeezed a tightly sprung ball of barbed wired. Big pieces of the barbed wire will keep popping out until the squeezers hands and arms are eventually entrapped in a mess of unwieldy barbed wire.

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    3. Good metaphor: "like trying to sqeezed a tightly sprung ball of barbed wired. Big pieces of the barbed wire will keep popping out until the squeezers hands and arms are eventually entrapped in a mess of unwieldy barbed wire."

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  2. New Komeito can withraw support of Abe and he will fall. New Komeito is supposedly committed to peace and no army or nuclear weapons in Japan.

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  3. There is a normalcy bias for Japan. It is absolutely irrational because, Japan is going through the unprecedented, worst nuclear catstrophe in history. Nothing in Japan is Normal in accorance with the projected happy talk of a Modern industrialized Developed- economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Japan is barely hanging on by a thread, if that. Far worse than the unstable Ukrainian NeoNazi Puppet Government.

    The current Ukrainian mess is really an artfact of the Chernobyl Catastrophe if the truth could be said. It is a product of extreme instability, massive emigration exodus over the past 30 years, and being taken advantage of by neocon catastrophe capitalists in the United States.

    The Unabashed desparation of the Japanese State and society is characterized by them allowing an extreme, sick despot like Abe to stay in power.

    The drinking water in Tokyo, Japan, a city of 20 million, is 24% more radioactive than the drinking water of Fukushima 150 miles away. Fukushima has three exploded nuclear reactors in full-blown nuclear meltdown. Unprecedented in world history. This is according to FukushimaDiary.com, a reliable source from a Japanese national about the radioactive State of Japan.

    The world truly never has seen anything like Fukushima before.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/30/the-worlds-never-seen-anything-like-this/

    Chernobyl which is a fraction of fukushima destryed the genome of the people of Belarus. Belarus is a country of 10 million with 85 percent of their children suffering from hesrt defects now.

    http://www.chernobyl-international.com/about-chernobyl/facts-and-figures

    Tokyo is not fit for habitation as Helen Caldicott and otheres have been saying for the past two years now.
    http://permaculturenews.org/2014/09/25/tokyo-contaminated-fit-habitation-doctor-says/

    Wishful thinking gets people nowhere

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  4. It is estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were used in the 1991 Gulf War.[16]
    --"History of Depleted Uranium and What It Is Used For". Energy Solutions.
    I am not sure how much more has been used since. I am sure that both the President and the military command knew the dangers. However, they went ahead because they saw some military advantage and also saw the military use as a good way to get rid of the stuff. This is the consciousness that allows for nuclear power plants, that allows them to be under maintained, that allows for faulty design and so forth. On a very tiny scale it is what we do when we surreptitiously toss a bit of trash out of a car window. What to do with this sticky candy paper. Looking around and seeing no other vehicles we slip the sticky paper out the window. George H. W. Bush looks around sees that he can dump a big load of trash out the window--several big lawn sacks of trash . . . on a daily basis indefinitely! Bush was a stellar litter bug followed by several others since.

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