Election night speech
Sen. Barack Obama spoke at a rally in Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois, after winning the race for the White House Tuesday night. The following is an exact transcript of his speech.
Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Chicago, Illinois, after winning the presidency Tuesday night.
Hello, Chicago.
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.
It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
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Posted in Politics | Comments Off
tags: change, democracy, election, hope, mccain, obama
Japan stands by 1993 apology over WW2 sexual slavery
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso reassured Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon that Japan stood by its 1993 apology (made by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono) over sexual slavery in its military brothels during WW2. This came after Korean and broader international criticism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over his comments that there was no evidence that women were coerced into working at WW2 brothels for Japanese troops. Although Abe had subsequently backtracked and backed the 1993 apology (statement appended below), it was often viewed as lip-service to smooth over cracks in Japan’s relations with not only China and Korea, but now the US.
“I am apologizing here and now as the prime minister, as it is stated in the Kono statement… As I frequently say, I feel sympathy for the people who underwent hardships, and I apologize for the fact that they were placed in this situation at the time.”
Abe is scheduled to visit the US in April, with the US Congress scheduled to pass on a non-binding resolution proposed by Democrat Representative Mike Honda soon after. The resolution calls for Japan to formally acknowledge [and] apologize … in a clear and unequivocal manner for its imperial armed forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery.” Abe has already denounced the resolution as being riddled with errors and said he would offer no new apologies even if it passes.
Japan’s war crimes have been well-documented, although these are never discussed in its textbooks for public schools. In particular, Japan’s use of “comfort women” in China and Korea remains a problem in its relations with those countries today. Apart from ignorance, the main contention by Japanese politicians and historians who argue that the Imperial Army did not coerce the women into sexual slavery stems from the claim that the comfort women had consented and/or were paid. There is also the claim that most of the comfort women were from Japan. However, studies have also indicated that as many as 200,000 local women in conquered lands were forced into sexual slavery.
Yasuji Kaneko, 87, told AP in an interview that “They cried out, but it didn’t matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.”
Posted in Culture, Japan, Law, News, Politics | Comments Off
tags: apology, japanese, slavery
Hot on the heels on the Korea-US FTA (KorUS), Japan has reluctantly admitted that it might have to consider its own FTA with the US as well. Reflecting their ambivalence, Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari compared KorUS to the black ships that forced Japan to open up to the outside world back in 1850. An FTA between the world’s largest and second largest economies, which account for nearly 40% of world trade, would have immense global effects. Economic effects aside, the FTA would also place additional pressure on their mutual strategic rival, China, which is still relatively new to the free trade (let alone FTA) game.
Without doubt, the biggest opponents of such an FTA would be the agricultural sector in Japan. The reduction, if not elimination, of most agricultural tariffs would be demanded by the US, although the KorUS example (where rice was excluded entirely) could offer some light in a long and very dark tunnel.
Posted in Japan, Politics | Comments Off
tags: FTA
The world’s largest FTA was signed today between the US and Korea, the world’s largest and 11th largest economies.
This would be a significant development for both sides. Korea has to date only concluded a couple of FTAs (with Chile and Singapore), while this would be the US’ biggest FTA since NAFTA. The negotiations were reportedly arduous, with numerous domestic opponents on both sides. According to preliminary reports, rice has been entirely excluded from the FTA, Korea would resume beef imports (pending a favorable ruling by the WHO), and tariffs on vehicles under 3000cc would be eliminated with immediate effect.
The fate of the FTA remains up in the air, however. With presidential and parliamentary elections coming up, a promise to scuttle the ratification of the FTA would be an easy way to win the votes of the anti-US sectors in Korea. A similar fate could await the FTA in the US, where the automobile industry would feel particularly threatened by the tariff elimination.
Japan would likely watch forthcoming developments, particularly on the US side, with great interest. Recent strains in US-Korea and Japan-Korea relations have perhaps led to the impression that Korea is moving further away from its alliance with the US, in favor of closer ties with China. The successful approval of the US-Korea FTA would hopefully re-energize the relationship beyond a mere military alliance. However, the successful ratification of the FTA would probably also lead to pressure for Japan to open negotiations with the US. And would Japan really want an FTA with US, with all the attendant tariff reductions an FTA necessarily entails? It would perhaps not be too forward to suggest that Japan would hope that the FTA meets an unfortunate death in the US Congress, providing it with a convenient way to delay any progress on the issue.
Posted in Nations, Politics | Comments Off
tags: FTA
Along the lines of he who controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future … It ooks like the Japanese Government is up to its old tricks again, rewriting history textbooks for its public school students. This time, references to the order by the Imperial Army for civilians to commit mass suicide in the Battle of Okinawa were deleted, even though these references had been made in previous editions of the textbooks.
Posted in Books, Culture, Japan, Politics | Comments Off
tags: government, lies, manipulation, revisionism
