President Barack Obama/World News & Issues Discussion

Casual D · Oct 9, 2009

C-Truth said: ↑

If I'm looking at the list right and not skipping any names, he's only the third African-American from the US to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded it.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

$pvcxGhxztCasey · Oct 10, 2009

Derek said: ↑

Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded it.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html
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...I know that. MLK Jr. was the 2nd black man to receive it, Ralph Bunche was the first. That makes Obama the third.

El Muerto · Oct 10, 2009

I support Obama but him winning the Nobel Prize for peace was just ridiculous.

Harlz · Oct 10, 2009

Dušan said: ↑

I support Obama but him winning the Nobel Prize for peace was just ridiculous.
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Pretty much my thoughts.

Tim · Oct 10, 2009

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-backs-expiring-patriot-act-spy-provisions/

What the fuck?!

Casual D · Oct 10, 2009

C-Truth said: ↑

...I know that. MLK Jr. was the 2nd black man to receive it, Ralph Bunche was the first. That makes Obama the third.
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Sorry, in my sleepiness I thought you said first lol.

Carry on .

Heavy is the Louis · Oct 10, 2009

I don't know. Personally, I'm not surprised. Maybe this will give him incentive to really take on the problems he's facing.

Babali · Oct 10, 2009

Hopefully, Louis, but I doubt it will do anything...

jps0910 · Oct 15, 2009

I'm glad he's finally seeing how difficult being Preisdent can be. Maybe he won't point his finger so mucn now. He's in New Orleans today...haha.

Filthy · Oct 16, 2009

The real question is; why is he still in campaign mode?

Harlz · Oct 16, 2009

Timothy said: ↑

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-backs-expiring-patriot-act-spy-provisions/

What the fuck?!
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Great... Fucking brilliant. Obviously I'm not American, but this is really disappointing.

$pvcxGhxztCasey · Oct 19, 2009

new medical marijuana policy

With each step backwards he makes it seems, he does something that gets me right back on the Obama bandwagon. This is a long time overdue.

"This is a major step forward," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality."
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The Emptiness Machine · Oct 19, 2009

C-Truth said: ↑

new medical marijuana policy

With each step backwards he makes it seems, he does something that gets me right back on the Obama bandwagon. This is a long time overdue.
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I agree that I think that this is going in the right direction. Though I don't smoke anything, including marijuana. I'm not against it though. If it will help me medically then, yes I would smoke it.

Dean · Oct 23, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8322322.stm

What a joker. He had a chance to stand up for his party and disprove criticisms (if there is indeed anything to disprove), and did he take it? Did he heck.

Chris · Oct 23, 2009

Dean said: ↑

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8322322.stm

What a joker. He had a chance to stand up for his party and disprove criticisms (if there is indeed anything to disprove), and did he take it? Did he heck.
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What do you think of his views?

Dean · Oct 24, 2009

Chris(tmas) said: ↑

What do you think of his views?
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I think that if you look at the basics of what the BNP say about immigration I guess there are one or two decent points, but they sensationalise a lot of things... I mean, I think there should be more restrictions on the people coming into the country but not to the extent that they'd want.
Besides that, some of the things Nick Griffin says publicly (such as the stuff about how London isn't a British city anymore, and him saying that a local hospital has made injured soldiers pay to watch TV while they recover which wasn't true), and just the general way he puts himself across, I don't like.

When he was put under scrutiny the other night he couldn't handle it, and that should be a requirement for anyone who wants to be a well-known politician... I mean, he not only couldn't handle it but now he's complaining to the BBC which is silly. He was put on the spot knowing full well that people would want to catch him out and, when he realised he couldn't just laugh everything off and say "It's not quite like that" without actually explaining what it is quite like, he wilted.

Theazninvasion68 · Nov 2, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw

Its a Documentary of the American Public education system. Since this thread seems dead of discussions, why not spark one up?

I'm a supporter of receiving a rich education and a fulfilling one. Seeing this has gotten me rather annoyed and upset, really. It honestly saddens me to see kids, hear kids as if they've not received a good education at all! What a waste, and what a shame, really.

But that's just me.

What are your views and opinions?

And to highlight the video;

1) Do schools need more money?
2) Public options for schools?
3) What do you think they teach kids in schools?
4) Teachers union, thoughts?
5) Teachers, bad and even sex-offenders, is a tough procedure to fire. Should this be allowed?

While these questions only serve to light a discussion, there are plenty other things to discuss as well about the Public education system.

The Emptiness Machine · Nov 2, 2009

Theazninvasion68 said: ↑

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw

Its a Documentary of the American Public education system. Since this thread seems dead of discussions, why not spark one up?

I'm a supporter of receiving a rich education and a fulfilling one. Seeing this has gotten me rather annoyed and upset, really. It honestly saddens me to see kids, hear kids as if they've not received a good education at all! What a waste, and what a shame, really.

But that's just me.

What are your views and opinions?

And to highlight the video;

1) Do schools need more money?
2) Public options for schools?
3) What do you think they teach kids in schools?
4) Teachers union, thoughts?
5) Teachers, bad and even sex-offenders, is a tough procedure to fire. Should this be allowed?

While these questions only serve to light a discussion, there are plenty other things to discuss as well about the Public education system.
Click to expand...

I do think that schools need more money.
-------------------------------------------------
JAPAN!? HUH?

Worried about a new direction in Japan's foreign policy, the Obama administration warned the Tokyo government Wednesday of serious consequences if it reneges on a military realignment plan formulated to deal with a rising China.
The comments from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates underscored increasing concern among U.S. officials as Japan moves to redefine its alliance with the United States and its place in Asia. In August, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won an overwhelming victory in elections, ending more than 50 years of one-party rule.
For a U.S. administration burdened with challenges in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and China, troubles with its closest ally in Asia constitute a new complication.
A senior State Department official said the United States had "grown comfortable" thinking about Japan as a constant in U.S. relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that "the hardest thing right now is not China, it's Japan."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102100746.html

U.S. overseas military bases are under the control not of some colonial office or ministry of foreign affairs but the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a plethora of other official, if sometimes secret, organs of state. These agencies build, staff, and supervise the bases-fenced and defended sites on foreign soil, often constructed to mimic life at home. However, not all overseas members of the military have families or want their families to accompany them; therefore, except in Muslim countries, these bases normally attract extensive arrays of bars and brothels, and the criminal elements that operate them. The presence of these bases unavoidably usurps, distorts, or subverts whatever institutions of democratic government may exist within the host society.
Stationing several thousand eighteen-to-twenty-four year-old American youths in cultures that are foreign to them and about which they are utterly ignorant is a recipe for the endless series of "incidents" plaguing nations that have accepted U.S. bases. American ambassadors quickly learn the protocol for visiting the host foreign office in order to apologize for the behavior of our troops. Even in closely allied countries where English is spoken, local residents get very tired of sexual assaults and drunken driving by foreign soldiers. During World War II, the British satirized our troops as "over-paid, over-sexed, and over here." Nothing has changed.
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As of November 2003, the United States had stationed in Japan some 47,000 uniformed military personnel, not counting 14,000 sailors attached to the Seventh Fleet at its bases at Yokosuka (Kanagawa prefecture) and Sasebo (Nagasaki prefecture), some of whom are intermittently at sea. In addition there were 52,000 American dependents, 5,500 civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and 23,500 Japanese working for the U.S. forces in jobs ranging from maintaining golf-courses and waiting on tables in the numerous officers' clubs to translating Japanese newspapers for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).5 This large contingent was deployed at ninety-one bases on Japanese soil, of which thirty-eight are located in Okinawa, where they occupy some 23,700 hectares or 19 percent of the choicest territory of the main island. Okinawa is host to some 28,000 American troops plus an equal number of camp followers and Defense Department civilians. The largest contingent of U.S. forces in Okinawa consists of 17,600 Marines, followed by Air Force pilots and maintenance crews at the huge Kadena Air Force Base, the largest U.S. military base in East Asia. Even without these unwelcome guests, Okinawa is an overcrowded island with an indigenous population of 1.3 million in a land area smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands.

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There is nothing particularly unusual about this manifestation of American military imperialism in Okinawa except for its concentration. It offers scenes that are easily reproduced in Germany, Italy, Kosovo, Kuwait, Qatar, Diego Garcia, and elsewhere, including more recently Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iraq. However, one distinguishing feature of the Okinawan bases is how much money the Japanese government pays to support them-some $4.25 billion a year out of a total annual cost of approximately $7.6 billion It does so in part to keep American soldiers well out of sight of mainland Japanese -- much as the Tokugawa Bakufu quarantined Dutch merchants on the island of Deshima -- because fully enfranchised Japanese citizens would not tolerate them. It also hopes to keep them happy living in the Japanese equivalent of Puerto Rico, a culturally heterogeneous part of the country that Japan forcibly annexed in 1879 and that has long been subject to official and popular discrimination by mainland people and authorities. The Japanese press refers to these base-support payments as the omoiyari yosan (sympathy budget), meaning sympathy for the poor Americans who cannot afford their expansive foreign policy. The SOFA covering American forces in Japan says that the United States will cover all costs of the deployments (art. xxiv) but since 1978, when the omoiyari yosan came into being, the Japanese government has in fact paid more than half. No other nation offers such lavish "host nation support" to the United States.6
The result is that the Marines, who have not a clue about Okinawa's history or culture and are given little or no instruction by their officers, live far more comfortably than they would in Oceanside, California, home of the First Marine Division's headquarters at Camp Pendleton, or Jacksonville, North Carolina, locale of the Second Marine Division's headquarters at Camp Lejeune. Facilities being built in Okinawa over just the past two years using Japanese money include a "luxury hotel" at Camp Foster, two new family-living towers with 68 two-and-three bedroom apartments each, a 4,700 square foot youth center, a "state of the art" theater complex for the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force's band, and a 33,024 square foot "community services building" that includes an arts and crafts hobby shop, an "entertainment center," an auditorium, broadcast facilities, and a photo lab.7
-------------------
Among its salient features is article iv: "The United States is not obliged, when it returns facilities and areas to Japan on the expiration of this Agreement or at an earlier date, to restore the facilities and areas to the condition in which they were at the time they became available to the United States armed forces, or to compensate Japan in lieu of such restoration." To many Japanese and all local government officials this is a deeply resented invitation to the U.S. military to pollute anything it wants to and evade responsibility for cleaning it up. The U. S. military's record on environmental protection is abominable.
Art. ix (2) says, "Members of the United Sates armed forces shall be exempt from Japanese passport and visa laws and regulations," meaning that American servicemen accused of crimes in Japan can be spirited out of the country without facing legal obstacles. Article x (1) is truly hated by most Japanese: "Japan shall accept as valid, without a driving test or fee, the driving permit or license or military driving permit issued by the United States to a member of the United States armed forces, the civilian component, and their dependents." Okinawans pay a high price in crashes and hit-and-run accidents because of this clause, especially after 1972, when driving on the left hand side of the road was restored on the island. Art. xiii (1) aggravates art. x: "The United States armed forces shall not be subject to taxes or similar charges on property held, used or transferred by such forces in Japan." The current (conservative) governor of Okinawa, Keiichi Inamine, contends that U.S. military personnel pay less than one-fifth of what Japanese citizens pay for the public services they receive and that if the tax rate on their vehicles were equal to what ordinary citizens pay, Okinawa's income would increase by �780 million.9 It should be noted that none of these clauses exists in any of the SOFAs with NATO countries.
---------------------
The American military contends that these procedures, which are a long-standing part of Japanese culture and apply to all suspects arrested in Japan, not just American servicemen, could lead American soldiers to make false confessions and thus constitute violations of their "human rights." In refusing to turn over suspects to the Japanese police before indictment, the U.S. military relies on another part of the SOFA's art. xvii, namely clause (9): "Whenever a member of the United States armed forces, the civilian component, or a dependent is prosecuted under the jurisdiction of Japan he shall be entitled: (a) to a prompt and speedy trial; (b) to be informed, in advance of the trial, of the specific charge or charges made against him; [and] (c) to be confronted with the witnesses against him." These requirements do not apply to an investigation prior to an indictment, but the U.S. military contends all the same that Japan does not live up to this clause and that Japanese criminal justice as a whole does not meet American standards. The Americans seem to have resurrected the old defense of extrality in China: no "white man"-or American soldier-should be subjected to the laws of an alien society where respect for human rights allegedly differs from ours.
This argument does not carry much weight in Okinawa (or anywhere else for that matter, given the U.S.'s abysmal record of protecting the human rights of foreigners). Every time there is a new instance of a sexually violent crime in which the prime suspect is an American soldier, the victim Okinawan, and the military refuses to turn him over until a Japanese court has issued an arrest warrant, there are calls from the governor, unanimous votes in the prefectural assembly, and street demonstrations demanding a total rewrite of the SOFA.
----------------
In talking about the excessive crime rates among American servicemen in Okinawa, Inamine likes to use the metaphor of points and lines-taken from the title of a well known mystery novel of the same name by Seich� Matsumoto. The American high command always characterizes each rape or murder committed by an American serviceman as an isolated "point"-an exceptional "tragic occurrence" committed by a one-in-a-million "bad apple," for which the American ambassador and commanding general profusely apologize. According to Inamine, Okinawans see not points but lines: the 58-year-long record of sexual assaults, bar brawls, muggings, drug violations, drunken driving accidents, and arson cases all committed by privileged young men who proclaim they are in Okinawa to protect the people from the dangers of political "instability" elsewhere in East Asia. During Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's visit to Okinawa in November 2003 -- the first visit of a secretary of defense since Bush I's secretary, Dick Cheney, was there thirteen years previous -- he said to the governor, "This region has been at peace during the existence of our bilateral security treaty [which has] greatly benefited our two nations."13 Rumsfeld evidently overlooked both the Korean and Vietnamese wars, which occurred during this period-and Okinawa's role as a staging area.
-------------------------
The governor's petition included the information that, according to Okinawan prefectural police records, during the thirty-year period since Okinawa reverted to Japan's administration (1972-2002), American troops, Pentagon civilians, and military dependents committed 5,157 crimes in Okinawa, of which 533 were the "heinous" crimes of murder and rape. This works out to 17.7 heinous crimes per year or 1.5 per month.15 In a famous study comparing rates of military sexual assault leading to court martial around the world from 1988 to 1994, the Dayton Daily News found that Okinawa had a rate of 4.12 per 1,000 U.S. military personnel compared with Camp Pendleton's 2.0, Camp Lejeune's 1.75, San Diego's 1.09, and Norfolk, Virginia's 0.80. Inamine stressed that this situation has not changed. In fact, since fiscal year 1996, just after the major Okinawan rape incident, the number of crimes committed by servicemen grew at a rate of 1.3 times per year.16
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http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1207-07.htm

After Japan's frustrated voters handed power to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Aug. 30 parliamentary election, many had hopes that the country's new leaders would begin to solve some of the country's intractable economic problems. Among other popular proposals, the new government, led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, vowed to provide more government assistance for families to promote consumer spending while simultaneously taming the country's ballooning debt, which at nearly 200% of GDP is the highest among rich nations.
----------------

But the DPJ is finding it easier to make campaign promises than to keep them. Less than two months after taking over, Hatoyama's administration is being forced into a difficult balancing act between the need to prevent a double-dip recession and the desire to keep Japan's budget deficit from spinning out of control. The recession is knocking tax revenues so far below expectations that the deficit will rise to $548 billion this year, an enormous 10% of GDP. Yet, despite Hatoyama's instructions to keep next year's spending no higher than this year's initial budget of $970 billion, the country's ministries have submitted 2010 spending requests totaling $1.04 trillion.
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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...rss-topstories

In September, the Japanese electorate ended the reign of the Liberal Democratic Party, which had governed the country with but one short interruption since 1955. The LDP had built its foreign policy around the military alliance with the U.S., but the party has now lost control of both houses of the Diet, or legislature. Yukio Hatoyama, the new prime minister, says nice things about America--but only when he is prompted to do so. And, significantly, he has signaled he wants to shift Japan's focus to China and the rest of Asia.
As he takes Japan in new directions, Hatoyama is bumping up against Washington. For one thing, he wants to end Japan's eight-year-old refueling site in the Indian Ocean, which supports NATO operations in Afghanistan, as well as investigate secret arrangements reached in the early 1960s regarding the shipment and storage in Japan of American nuclear weapons. Most important, he is now trying to show Japan is an equal partner in the alliance by renegotiating a 2006 agreement to reorganize American forces in his country. A particular sore point is Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is located near residential areas on Okinawa. Simply put, the Japanese prime minister wants the base off the island, not merely transferred to another part of it.
The Futenma matter is extremely controversial. An overwhelming majority of Okinawans want the American military to leave, but the Pentagon is adamant about not reopening the deal involving the Air Station's relocation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a visit to Japan last week, publicly shot down the concept of renegotiation in blunt words, embarrassing the Hatoyama government by calling its proposals "immensely complicated and counterproductive" and telling it to "move on." Washington would like to settle the spat before President Obama arrives in Japan on Nov. 12, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano has made it clear there will be no early end to the already nasty disagreement.
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http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/29/oki...?feed=rss_news

---------------
So now that you've read all of that , what do you think?

What's gonna happen?

Theazninvasion68 · Nov 3, 2009

Japan is it's own country and we shouldn't interfere. It is clear that Americans are not welcomed in Okinawa due to many of the problems they are causing. What's gonna happen? Ultimately, it seems as though we must let Japan be it's own country in military power, and the Americans there are just gonna be relocated to brought home.

==========

And why more money? It's shown that more money doesn't help at all.

Iain · Nov 3, 2009

Theazninvasion68 said: ↑

And why more money? It's shown that more money doesn't help at all.
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Because, the longer you deny school systems money, the more time it takes to get the schools that actually teach kids shit the proper supplies, etc.

What's sad is that it's not the federal government doing this. It's each individual state. Got a problem with the education system where you live? Don't take it to the federal government, take it to your governor. Even then, you won't get much, because it's mainly each city and school system that gets stuff done. So take it to your mayor.

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