Hurray for the Octogenarian Challenger!

Yuichiro Miura--the same man who went down Mt. Everest on skiis when he was a younger daredevil--succeeded for the third time in climbing to the peak of Mt. Everest. He is now 80 years plus 7 months old, and is a veteran of heart surgery, broken bones, and joint pain. That makes him the poster boy (one of many, I believe) for challenging one's limits.

In a phone call to his daughter in Tokyo, here's what Mr. Miura had to say:

“I made it!” Miura said over the phone. “I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world’s best feeling, although I’m totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well.”

One more, and I'm done

Please remember these few facts about the now notorious Mr. Hashimoto, Mayor of Osaka:
1. Osaka is not a country. This mayor does not make foreign policy. He in no way speaks for Japan.
2. Mr. Hashimoto is chief of a splinter party. He is not a member of the ruling coalition, another reason why he does not speak for Japan.

With these points in mind, let us now sweep him into the dustbin of history and get on with real life.

Here's sand in your eye?

When a public figure as canny as Osaka's former mayor says something so totally removed from common sense as what Toru Hashimoto has said about the "needs" of military men, past and present, one has to ask why? It's like a street fighter throwing a handful of sand in his opponents' eyes to keep them busy while he gets his dirty work done.

What are we being distracted from seeing? Could it be that, all over the world, there are military people in places where they do not belong? Could it be that, all over the world, there are women being treated as conveniences rather than as human beings?

Look around. What are we not seeing when we are distracted by outrageous words?

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I am not going to dignify the ultra-rightist Ishin Kai's Mr. Hashimoto's remarks about soldiers and women by repeating them here. The point is, he is clueless about the basic issue: these military men (no mention of women in the military in the ultra-rightist lexicon) with their "unmet needs" should be home in their own countries, with their own friends and families, meeting their "needs" in socially-acceptable ways. They do not belong in Okinawa.

It's the 21st century, well past the age of colonizing foreign lands. It's time for foreign military personnel to wake up and smell the coffee--in their own homeland.

What, exactly, is TPP?

By now everyone in Japan has heard the acronym TPP, and we know the ruling party (and not its coalition partner) wants Japan to join, but no one seems to know what membership in it involves. According to the following excerpt from a report by an organization called Public Knowldedge, the lack of transparency is deliberate. More alarming, not everyone is excluded from the discussion--only We the People.

Does anyone out there really like the sound of "special interests" in the same sentence as "privileged access"?


Here's the salient part of the Public Knowledge commentary:

"The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement ("TPP") is a free trade agreement currently being negotiated by nine countries: The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Although the TPP covers a wide range of issues, this site focuses on the TPP's intellectual property (IP) chapter.


The TPP suffers from a serious lack of transparency, threatens to impose more stringent copyright without public input, and pressures foreign governments to adopt unbalanced laws.


Many of the same special interests that pushed for legislation like SOPA and PIPA have special access to this forum—including privileged access to the text as well as US negotiators."