On June 15, Defense Minister Taro Kono announced a suspension of the deployment of the Aegis Ashore missile interception system—a suspension that ten days later became a cancellation. The progression from deciding to deploy Aegis Ashore, to cancelling it, to considering alternatives, reveals policy formation fraught with dysfunction.
How bad does it have to get? I’m talking about Japan’s cruelty and meanness towards its Non-Japanese residents. How bad before people think to step in and stop it? With Covid-19, we might have an answer.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of June 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the first half of June 2020.
Since the 1990s, US society has been drawing into two broad camps, which for simplicity’s sake we will call the Reds and the Blues. This year, the polarization between them has reached a new level of passion and intensity. If this polarization descends entirely into a civil war—and the November 2020 elections could very well be a trigger for such a scenario—history suggests that the initial victory would be decisively in favor of the Red fascists.
A press conference by US President Donald Trump took an unexpected turn after Trump announced not only the end of Hong Kong’s favorable trade status under American law, but that the United States would be withdrawing from the World Health Organization.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the first half of May 2020.
Defense Minister Taro Kono’s denunciation of NHK and the mainstream news media as “fake news” for reporting that his ministry had decided to give up the Araya Training Area in Akita city as host for an Aegis Ashore facility was a cynical ploy on his part, but it did highlight once again that many people misunderstand the news media in rather fundamental ways.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of April 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of March 2020.
