Here is a new article from Japan that show how our leading politicians lie and bring shame on my country and pave the way for right-wing attacks on academics who dare investigate those lies:
Nothing new, just more of same old crap that Japan’s politicians are unfortunately so well-known for - and with that they play right into the hands of the tyrants in Beijing.
(Loyalty to my country means loyalty to the people of my country - and that means standing up to the lies and manipulations coming from the government and supporting those who work for peace and understanding)
Some of this may not be clear, unless one understand the “kisha club” system in Japan: journalists only have access to first-hand information from officials if they are members of these clubs, and people who are considered too critical of the LDP (the party that has been in power for most of the time since the war) don’t get to join these clubs. So reporters who are “in” abstain from asking critical questions, and the media already starts out with a pro-government bias. Nevertheless our prime minister feels sufficiently irritated by the media to have his officials put pressure on them.
Democracy is still immature and fragile in eastern Asia.
Mayor Ma quickly brought much the same policy into his administration after his election a few years ago. Only certain members of the press could speak with him, etc. and questions needed to be submitted in advance.
Some stupid press abroad reports a “landslide” victory in yesterday’s election - too bad they don’t know English: there was little sliding, certainly none by the ruling coalition who got about the same percentage of seats (haven’t gotten the information on the percentage of votes yet - interesting that the election office does not report that, but i’ll get it eventually - but this percentage is not what a naive onlooker would expect for someone who has over 2/3 (68.6%) of the seats in parliamant - 2 years ago 45% of the popular vote got the coalition 2/3 (67.7%) of the seats).
I work in news. Most officials are like this, but so are private corporations. Many spokespeople demand to see the article before it’s published and will only answer questions based on a script, leading to some very dull reporting. Reporters here are mostly overworked and have a lot of pressure so they focus on quantity rather than quality. In fact, who is talking is far more important than what is said, sadly.
[code]2012
LDP FPTP votes 43.01% list votes 27.79% seats: 294 of 480 = 61.25% of seats
KMT FPTP votes 1.49% list votes 11.90% seats: 31 of 480 = 6.46% of seats
Coalition FPTP votes 44.49% list votes 39.69% seats: 325 of 480 = 67.71% of seats
2014
LDP FPTP votes 48.1% list votes 33.11% seats: 291 of 475 = 61.27% of seats
KMT FPTP votes 1.5% list votes 13.71% seats: 35 of 475 = 7.36% of seats
Coalition FPTP votes 49.6% list votes 46.82% seats: 326 of 475 = 68.63% of seats[/code]
About 5% more support for the coalition, based on the single election campaign topic “economics”
(the government had ensured that other topics, such as constitutional amendment proposals and
the new secrecy law were kept out of the media during the campaign).
A commenter posted a historic quote under that article:
“the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
