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(Thread IKs: fart simpson)
 
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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Is it time Japan restored its military?

In April, Motegi Toshimitsu, the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, called his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to express his concern over Chinese military activity.

Of particular concern was a new law which allows the Chinese coast guard to use weapons. The Chinese Navy has also been behaving aggressively in the East and South China seas, including encroaching into Taiwanese and Filipino territory.

In response, Wang Yi warned Motegi to stay out of ‘internal’ Chinese affairs.

This kind of soft-handed diplomacy has been the main weapon in the Japanese arsenal since the end of the Second World War.

Japan has no official military. The Japanese post-war constitution actively forbids the country from maintaining an army, navy or air force. Instead, it has ‘Self-Defense Forces’ which are officially extensions of the national police force.

Opposition to militarism has been one of the cornerstones of post-war Japanese culture, and breaking with its colonial past was vital in thawing relations with its neighbours and the West.

Fuelled by an increasingly belligerent China, both Japan and its Western allies are indicating that a fully restored Japanese military may be required as a counterbalance to Chinese aggression in the Asian neighbourhood.

Japanese militarism

Japanese militarism began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and ended with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

During the restoration, Japan underwent enormous social change and industrialisation in order to mirror and compete with the dominant Western powers of the time.

Central to this was the formation of the Imperial Japanese Army. The force was fiercely loyal to the Emperor, and its use in destroying the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate during the 1868 Boshin War meant that the military was immediately tied to the rule of the state.

Guidance from French and British experts meant that the Imperial forces quickly modernised. Japan also quietly went about building one of the most powerful naval forces in the world (the Imperial Japanese Navy).

This was demonstrated in 1905, when Japanese forces crushed those of the Russian Empire. The defeat was a great humiliation to the Russians, and a shock to Western observers who did not believe an Asian force could defeat a modern European military.

Japanese military confidence grew throughout the early 20th century. In 1910 it annexed Korea, beginning a long and brutal occupation of the peninsula which has deep ramifications within Korean society to this day.

Japan sided with the Allies during the First World War, and took control of key German possessions throughout the Pacific.

It was denied longterm control of most of these possessions in the Treaty of Versailles, sparking an oppositional relationship with the Western powers it had admired for so long.

In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria, with the Western powers responding with only minor diplomatic remonstrations. The occupation was, again, brutal for the local population.

The worst of this came in 1937, when soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army raped and murdered an estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese troops and civilians in Nanking (modern day Nanjing).

In 1941 Japanese military confidence had swelled to such an extent that its leaders believed they could challenge American supremacy in the Pacific.

Japanese forces initially performed exceptionally well. The surprise attack at Pearl Harbor was followed by stunning victories over the British and Americans both on land and sea. Japanese forces successfully took Allied strongholds in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, stunning Allied commanders.

By 1942 Japanese forces were in control of territory from Alaska to the doorstep of Australia.

Its forces were, of course, overstretched, and the Allies soon pushed the Japanese forces back into its own traditional territory, decimating its military strength and capabilities in the meantime.

The Japanese nation, which was determined to fight to the bitter end in the name of the Emperor, finally surrendered after succumbing to two nuclear bomb strikes.

The nature of that surrender had important ramifications in dissipating the mystique of Japanese imperialism. Prior to 1945, Emperor Hirohito had god-like status in Japanese culture. He was never seen or heard, and was said to possess supernatural abilities.

The first time the Japanese nation heard their Emperor speak, it was when he broadcast the nation’s surrender. The Japanese nation heard a frail voice over the radio, speaking a barely intelligible form of traditional Japanese.
Douglas MacArthur with Emperor Hirohito

As the mystique of the emperor faded, so to did the foundational ideals on which the Japanese military stood.

Around three million Japanese died during the Second World War, and the nation underwent a period of reinvention in the post-war era.

Central to this was the new Japanese Constitution, drafted under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur, Article 9 of which explicitly forbids the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.

Awkward with the neighbours

The Japanese post-war recovery was nothing short of remarkable. Within a few decades, its economy was one of the largest in the world, and the success of Japanese popular culture saw the nation’s soft power rise to unrivalled heights.

For Westerners, Japan may be seen as a bastion of peace, stability and Kawaii culture, but for many the Japanese are still seen as the regional aggressors.

The scars of Japanese colonial past run particularly deep in places like Korea. Japan’s exploitative rule of the control has cultural ramifications on the peninsula to this day.

As recently as 2015, Japan paid $8.3m to a South Korean-administered fund for victims of Japanese activity during the Second World War, in which Korean women were forced to serve as “comfort women” to Japanese troops.

The scars still run deep, and it doesn’t help that Japan hasn’t fully severed itself from its colonial symbolism.

The Rising Sun flag in particular remains a point of controversy, with South Korea wanting it banned at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.

The flag is still widely used in Japanese society, and variations of it adorn the current naval/military defence force. One South Korean official compared the flag to the Swastika.

If the use of a flag is such a controversial topic in the region, imagine how controversial a fully restored Japanese military would be.

One could foresee Beijing utilising historical grievances to drive a wedge between two nations in Japan and South Korea which the West relies on heavily as a counterbalance in the region.

There have been rumblings of just that happening, however.

What next?

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe installed a number of reforms which pivoted the Japanese Defense Forces toward becoming a fully fledged military outfit.

His adminstration passed a law which bypassed Article 9 of the constitution by allowing Japan to use force in defending its allies. Abe’s administration also approved a new muscular defense plan.

Currently the Defense Forces boast around 247,000 active personnel. Japanese forces participated in the occupation of Iraq, and in 2015 a Credit Suiise survey ranked the Japanese forces as the world’s fourth most powerful, behind only the US, Russia, and China.

The Japanese military does, in practice, exist. It would just be a case of formalising that existence within the constitution. But, as we’ve seen with the controversy around the Rising Sun flag, doing so could open up old wounds in the region.

The US and its allies walk a delicate line in Asia. Japan is key to initiatives such as the Five Eyes, and a strong Japanese military would relieve some responsibility in countering China from an increasingly overburdened Washington.

It is time Japan restored its military, but it is important that it is framed as a new beginning, and not a rebirth of a Japanese militarism which is, for many, synonymous with brutality.

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Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot

ill put this very simply south koreans and the chinese still have very real grievances with japan and their actiosn pre ww2 during ww2 and after.

there are many chinese families whose grandparents/parents lives through japanese occupation that are still alive although a lot of the grandparents have passed im sure there are still many who are still alive.

south koreans are probably the same

japan pushing for their military for anything more than self defense will go over SUPER SUPER badly in the region 100% guaranteeing it

like gently caress man my grandparents who have passed away LITERALLY lived through the japanese occupation of hong kong their first child (or it was 2nd kid i forget which) but she died because of malnutrition because you guessed it the japanese imperial army. my eldest uncle loving lived through the occupation as a small kid. my loving grandma had to loving subtly cover up and hide her face whenever she went out to avoid the gaze of the imperial troops guess why she had to do that?

the fact the west glosses over this pisses off a lot of people

Agrajag has issued a correction as of 01:03 on Apr 15, 2021

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Agrajag posted:

ill put this very simply south koreans and the chinese still have very real grievances with japan and their actiosn pre ww2 during ww2 and after.

yeah in case it wasn't clear I think this sort of rhetoric sucks and it bothers me that people are getting so mad at China that they're passing around these sorts of articles as a hot take. China bad? well obviously we just need everyone else to band together against them, I'm sure there's no regional dynamics that'd get in the way of that!

Lostconfused
Oct 1, 2008

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-idUSKBN2C10CU

quote:

The U.S. Commerce Department said the seven Chinese entities were “involved with building supercomputers used by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernisation efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs.”

On Tuesday, Taiwan’s Alchip Technologies Ltd said it had stopped production for all products related to Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, which is on the new U.S. list.

Alchip, which said 39% of its revenue last year came from Phytium, added that it was collecting “detailed documents for our U.S. counsel to determine if the products are subject to EAR (Export Administration Regulations)”.

Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot

gradenko_2000 posted:

yeah in case it wasn't clear I think this sort of rhetoric sucks and it bothers me that people are getting so mad at China that they're passing around these sorts of articles as a hot take. China bad? well obviously we just need everyone else to band together against them, I'm sure there's no regional dynamics that'd get in the way of that!

if theres anything that guarantees a banding together of the region its against japan if they ever to let their military do more than just self defense

its amazing white frat bro ivy leaguers dont know this. oh right...

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.

stephenthinkpad posted:


edit: here is the TV smashing photo


The look on TV-dropping guy's face

John_A_Tallon
Nov 22, 2000

Oh my! Check out that mitre!

stephenthinkpad posted:

I would imagine the pan anti-Duterte fractions are banding together behind this SCS reef campaign. It's kinda like the Sino-India border conflict, but instead push by the opposition party. Remember there was some Chinese smartphone smashing news from India last year? I think some will come up in Philippines soon.


edit: here is the TV smashing photo


That effigy has a strong :effort: vibe

Dreddout
Oct 1, 2015

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Agrajag posted:

if theres anything that guarantees a banding together of the region its against japan if they ever to let their military do more than just self defense

its amazing white frat bro ivy leaguers dont know this. oh right...

Looking forward to the koreas putting aside their differences and forming a united front against the japanese

PawParole
Nov 16, 2019

America should hire 30 million internet trolls to close the gap.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
China 50 cent army instructions





quote:

Duterte's playbook, as adapted from the PRC playbook.

quote:

Lack of Education. Most of the folk are illiterate on everything, let alone political discourse. To make up for their lack of understanding of things, they use their emotions as guides in disseminating issues.

Thus, the goal of 50¢ army is to incite as much emotions as possible, to the point where they can persuade anyone to took their bait. This strategy is effective in low-education countries, like ours.

quote:

If you still think that Duterte isn't a puppet of the CCP, you are being willfully ignorant

I bet even the online gambling call centers here were just fronts so that PLA agents can learn how to speak Filipino

quote:

China deserves thousands of A-Bombs for the scummery they’ve done to the world.

If me posting about how my country is slowly being driven insane is getting tedious, please tell me and I'll stop.

There WAS one good joke in the thread:

quote:

actually, scientists in the US are leading an operation to instantly identify chinese propaganda from an audio sample. it will be a big help in the fight against corrupt governments which use social media to spread state-curated information! google 'operation earnest voice' for more info

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

gradenko_2000 posted:

If me posting about how my country is slowly being driven insane is getting tedious, please tell me and I'll stop.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Some Guy TT
Aug 30, 2011

https://mobile.twitter.com/speechboy71/status/1382430025845239810

Grapplejack
Nov 27, 2007

crosspost from the climate thread

https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/1382066577567256577

I think that regardless of our feelings on China we can all agree that they should absolutely bring the hammer down on these dudes and put them in front of firing squads, right

Some Guy TT
Aug 30, 2011

checking the thread title first slowly nodding in agreement

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Grapplejack posted:

I think that regardless of our feelings on China we can all agree that they should absolutely bring the hammer down on these dudes and put them in front of firing squads, right

correct

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

indigi
Jul 20, 2004

how can we not talk about family
when family's all that we got?
China sucks poo poo :xd:

F Stop Fitzgerald
Dec 12, 2010

indigi posted:

China sucks poo poo :xd:

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT
Aug 30, 2011

uhhh pardon my possible ignorance but isnt the phillipines also a multinational state that would seem to suggest you cant actually have a minority filipino population in the phillipines unless youre defining a real filipino in such a way that certain ethnic minorities are excluded

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.
Like Filipinos aren't already treated as slave labor

Some Guy TT
Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/vicjkim/status/1382151930919546880

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Some Guy TT posted:

uhhh pardon my possible ignorance but isnt the phillipines also a multinational state that would seem to suggest you cant actually have a minority filipino population in the phillipines unless youre defining a real filipino in such a way that certain ethnic minorities are excluded

what they're saying is that so many Chinese will move into the Philippines, and so many Filipinos will be... uh, genocided, that even under the broad umbrella term of "Filipinos", we'd still end up a minority in our own country relative to some hypothetical Chinese majority.

you're otherwise correct that outside of wildly reactionary nightmares, "Filipino" is a broad multi-ethnic/multi-cultural term

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

gradenko_2000 posted:

what they're saying is that so many Chinese will move into the Philippines, and so many Filipinos will be... uh, genocided, that even under the broad umbrella term of "Filipinos", we'd still end up a minority in our own country relative to some hypothetical Chinese majority.

you're otherwise correct that outside of wildly reactionary nightmares, "Filipino" is a broad multi-ethnic/multi-cultural term

that seems unlikely, to me

Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot

gradenko_2000 posted:

what they're saying is that so many Chinese will move into the Philippines, and so many Filipinos will be... uh, genocided, that even under the broad umbrella term of "Filipinos", we'd still end up a minority in our own country relative to some hypothetical Chinese majority.

you're otherwise correct that outside of wildly reactionary nightmares, "Filipino" is a broad multi-ethnic/multi-cultural term

so wheres this narrative of a chinese invasion of the phillipines coming from?

stephenthinkpad
Jan 2, 2020
Here are some cool Modi election rally photos

https://indianexpress.com/photos/india-news/kumbh-mela-high-security-no-adherence-to-covid-guidelines-7269874/





Also in other news, India new confirmed exceed 200k yesterday.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Agrajag posted:

so wheres this narrative of a chinese invasion of the phillipines coming from?

Territorial water disputes in the South China Sea have been a thing for decades, and I hopefully don't have to recapitulate all of it. But in short, China (among other countries) is claiming islands that the Philippines claims is rightfully theirs, and it culminated in an UNCLOS ruling in the PH's favor in 2016.

It was THE foreign policy issue of the 2016 elections, with Duterte promising that he'd ride a jetski out to the islands and plant a Philippine flag there himself.

Obviously that didn't happen, and rather the Duterte administration has been rather inert and inept and accommodating when it comes to trying to challenge these claims in the SCS. That's the main root of peoples's belief that Duterte is a puppet of Beijing.

Duterte's Build-Build-Build infrastructure program was also tied back to China in that the loans came from Beijing, and that there were Chinese construction firms involved in the projects. Since, of course, every Chinese firm is necessarily a "state-owned" firm, then people were speculating that this was being used as a backdoor by the Chinese government to place people inside the Philippines, to say nothing of the spectre of a "Chinese debt trap", as we've seen that narrative play out in Africa.

Another angle is that, starting in 2018, online gambling operations out of China started putting up call center operations in Manila. This disrupted the real estate market, and generally created this atmosphere of racialized fear with roving groups of twentysomething Chinese men going around parts of town while on their break, speaking a language lots of people couldn't understand and generally triggering a lot of middle-class "concerns" over property values. This goes hand-in-hand with a perceived spike in tourism from China when coupled with the stereotype of Chinese tourists being ill-mannered folk who poop and piss on sidewalks.

At some point, there was a scandal involving allegations that some of the employees of these call centers were actually PLA spies, and/or that some of the "retirees" buying up condominium properties in Manila were actually barely into their 30s and so had to be operating under false pretense.

Yet another angle is the establishment of DITO Telecommunications - a third player in a market currently dominated by a duopoly. The "problem" was that DITO is partnered/backed by Chinese business interests, which then raised the spectre of "what if Beijing is going to intercept your messages and read your emails".

More recently, COVID - besides the standard "China did this on purpose to damage the world" narrative, there's also been speculation that Duterte essentially traded-away islands in the South China Sea in exchange for doses of Sinovac, which is a lose-lose situation because not only did we lose our islands, we also got the lovely vaccine! This has been exacerbated by the administration repeatedly puffing-up the capabilities of Sinovac far beyond what's reasonable to say (and indeed, far more than what even the Chinese Health Ministry was willing to admit).

Last week, I did post that story about how there's something like a hundred-plus "maritime militia" ships occupying another part of our waters, followed by a "missile boat" chasing away a local journalist trying to report on the area.

Lastly, that specific image I posted was part of a thread about how one of our large media corporations, ABS-CBN (think something like MSNBC), recently agreed to air segments from "Chinatown TV", which is a Chinese-produced Mandarin-language news channel. Duterte badgered Congress into denying a renewal of ABS-CBN's broadcasting license early last year, which has lead to them downsizing greatly since they can no longer actually air on the radio or TV and now have to rely on their internet-based outlets. The thinking is that either Duterte had planned this all along in order to allow this show to enter Philippine media, or that he inadvertently caused this by damaging ABS-CBN's finances to the point where they were desperate enough to enter into this deal.

Either way, the thinking is "oh poo poo the Chinese now have a direct line to broadcast propaganda right into our airwaves, invasion is imminent!", even if it literally wouldn't work that way because A. it's in loving Mandarin, who would even understand it? and B. the whole point of denying the broadcasting license is so that ABS-CBN can't be on the airwaves anymore, which means you can only watch this if you're livestreaming ABS-CBN via Facebook or youtube.

Anyway, it's just this constant compounding of one issue after another that ratchets up the Sinophobic paranoia and it feels like it's reaching a fever pitch.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010


Capitalism has ruined them.

Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot

a few weeks ago i had some videos popup on my youtube recommendeds with north korean defectors reacting positively to american military poo poo. it was weird to say the least

there was also a lot of america good and bestest type vids in that channel too

BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy

Agrajag posted:

a few weeks ago i had some videos popup on my youtube recommendeds with north korean defectors reacting positively to american military poo poo. it was weird to say the least

there was also a lot of america good and bestest type vids in that channel too
yeah i've seen that one and seemed like it was produced by an organization of some kind. it was like, wow, these american soldiers are much better trained and equipped than our guys...

it's a little fishy

BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy
https://twitter.com/MMAFighting/status/1381336276025147398

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019


The full quote is amazing

quote:

“I don’t hate Weili or anything like that, but I do feel as though I have a lot to fight for in this fight and what she represents,” Namajunas said when speaking to Lithuanian outlet LRT ahead of UFC 261. “I was just, I was just trying to remind myself of my background and everywhere that I come from and my family and everything like that. And I kind of wanted to educate my training partner Chico Camus on the Lithuanian struggle and just the history of it all. So we watched ‘The Other Dream Team’ just to get like an overall sentiment of what we fight for. And so, just after watching that it’s just a huge reminder of yeah — better dead than red, you know?

:yeah:

Southpaugh
May 26, 2007

Smokey Bacon


Rose gonna be talking about blood and soil in no time. I think Andrade may have knocked a few screws loose.

Antonymous
Apr 4, 2009

I worked with a guy from Lithuania and he turned out to be insanely racist guised as anti-communist too. It's like an identity thing for their chuds, you have to recoil in disgust when you see Cyrillic letters and ask 'why do all black people ... ?' type questions, and when the chinese are brought up it's like their eyes light up - and this guy's girlfriend was mainland chinese - because they think no other white person sees chinese as 'people'

also they were the most enthusiastic nazi supporters during wwii and killed 95% of their jewish pop in advance of the nazis reaching them

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Antonymous posted:

I worked with a guy from Lithuania and he turned out to be insanely racist guised as anti-communist too. It's like an identity thing for their chuds, you have to recoil in disgust when you see Cyrillic letters and ask 'why do all black people ... ?' type questions, and when the chinese are brought up it's like their eyes light up - and this guy's girlfriend was mainland chinese

also they were the most enthusiastic nazi supporters during wwii and killed 95% of their jewish pop in advance of the nazis reaching them

i have bad news about having a chinese gf to prove your not racist

Malleum
Aug 16, 2014

Am I the one at fault? What about me is wrong?
Buglord

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

:350:

Antonymous
Apr 4, 2009

don't click this,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hQRm3KwM8

I haven't watched it but the image seared into my brain, so vile. idk how people gently caress up their lives so bad to be racist against their own kids, insanely sad.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

that guy is terrible

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Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe

lol gently caress this nazi, but also I had not heard of Zhang Weili and she seems pretty badass

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