How to Be Homeless in Japan

How to Be Homeless in Japan

Our Human Planet (2018)

Film Review

This two-part documentary focuses on homelessness in the Japanese city of Osaka. When the Japanese economy collapsed in the 1990s, many older workers lost their jobs. Last year Osaka (pop 19 million)  had 18,000 homeless, mostly men. It’s easier for women who lose their jobs to return to live with family.

Part One (How to be Homeless in Japan) focuses on an 63-year-old man who makes a living collecting aluminum cans to sell at a recycling center. His work day starts before dawn, and he makes roughly $8 a day. In Osaka, one of the most expensive cities in the world, this earns him two meals of day old rice and fish, a cup of tea and a cup of sake. His spends his afternoons in the library reading.

Part Two (Japanese Homeless Fight Back) focuses on organizing efforts by Osaka’s homeless to protect themselves and better meet their needs. In addition to setting up an immaculate tent city on the grounds of a national monument, a number of them run a charity that uses expired supermarket food to provide two hot meals a week for all Osaka’s street people.

It also features a march Osaka’s homeless organized to protest the death of a homeless man kicked to death by unemployed youth.

 

Japan’s population is shrinking by a quarter of a million people every year

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.

Author: Emma Charlton, Senior Writer, Formative Content

How do you stop your country’s population shrinking?

While some obvious suggestions may spring to mind, coming up with policy responses is not often simple. Nowhere is this felt more acutely than in Japan, where the population declined by more than a quarter of a million last year.

That’s the equivalent of three times the amount of people it takes to fill London’s Wembley Stadium in just 52 weeks, and it’s showing no signs of slowing. The total population was 126 million in the year to October 2018, a fall of 0.2% compared with a year earlier, and the eighth consecutive drop.

Japan’s demographic challenges are well documented. As well as having one of the fastest-shrinking populations in the world, ageing is a key issue. Taken together, these problems underscore the challenges facing the country’s government and raise questions about the policies that might help, including loosening immigration rules and improving labour-force participation […]

via Japan’s population is shrinking by a quarter of a million people every year — The European Sting – Critical News & Insights on European Politics, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Business & Technology – europeansting.com

22 out of 101 members of the “New Freshmen” in Congress have worked for the C.I.A. or been in the Military (Intelligence)

Original article: Jesus Christos! The old Soviet Union had rules about KGB and other intelligence services, barring them from public office! This a huge fucking conflict of interest, do I really need to comment? Clandestine services have secret oaths and alliances to foreign powers. Their prior work in Intel wasn’t just about collecting information as MSM/Hollywood have the public believe but running what is called PsyOps and disinfo campaigns in every corner of the globe, including “Democracies” like USA and 51st state of the USA, Israel.

[…]

via 22 out of 101 members of the “New Freshmen” in Congress have worked for the C.I.A. or been in the Military (Intelligence.) — In Rollie We Trust

‘Stop & Shop’ Announces Creation of New Robot Customers – Striking Workers Will Be Fired And Worker Supporting Customers Replaced As Grocer Goes Completely Automated

This gallery contains 4 photos.

Originally posted on xenagoguevicene:
“Who needs customers?” the owners of the Stop & Shop supermarket said at a special news conference to announce their fully automated business model. Many have seen the impressive robot that has been patrolling the aisles…

DAS KAPITAL: ‘Rationalised Plunder’, Failed Economics – By Rex Weyler

Why classical economics only works for the super-rich.

RIELPOLITIK

Source – greenpeace.org

– “…Neo-classical economic theory works just fine, but only if one ignores the human and ecological costs: poverty, squalor, homelessness, migrations, biodiversity loss, global heating, disappearing forests, toxic land and water, and rising, acidic oceans. Capitalism is designed to benefit those who have capital, the wealthy. For most of humanity, modern neo-classical economics erodes well being. For the ecosystem at large, neo-classical economics serves as a rationalisation for plunder”

Failed Economics – By Rex Weyler 

“The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer,” is an ancient maxim that dates back thousands of years. In our era, we must add: “And wild nature gets trampled.”

A recently cleared forest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace

At the end of 2018, Credit Suisse published its updated report on global wealth. Forty-two-million millionaires and billionaires comprise the richest 0.5% of the world’s population. That translates to…

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Mumia Abu-Jamal wins right to re-open appeals — Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement

https://bit.ly/2GfK0VC

Community activists and leaders from the Philadelphia region will hold a news conference 12 noon, Thursday, April 18 at the Octavius V. Catto Statue on the south side of Philadelphia City Hall to discuss today’s decision by District Attorney Larry Krasner to finally relent to Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker’s ground-breaking decision which gives political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal the right to reopen his appeals.

By rescinding his appeal, Krasner has removed a major hurdle for Abu-Jamal to eventually be released after 37 years in prison. This is a significant development in Abu-Jamal’s quest for freedom.

Public pressure on Krasner’s office to do the right thing and rescind the appeal gained momentum in early February when Yale Law School students publicly withdrew their invitation to Krasner to deliver a keynote address to their Rebellious Lawyering (Reb/Law) conference. In Philadelphia, activists often confronted Krasner whenever he spoke in public with signs calling on him to “Drop the Appeal.”

The next step is re-opening Abu-Jamal’s appeals filed between 1995 and 2012 before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys will argue against the constitutional violations that unfairly convicted the imprisoned journalist who is suffering from the ravages of Hepatitis C and glaucoma. As Philadelphia’s DA, Krasner will be in the position of defending police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

Attorney Rachel Wolkenstein added: “For over 37 years, Mumia has been imprisoned for a crime [that] police and prosecution know he did not commit. We now have a legal opening in the fight for Mumia’s freedom” […]

via Mumia Abu-Jamal wins right to re-open appeals — Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement

Hidden History: The Interlocking Relationships Between Wall Street, the CIA and the So-Called Free Press

Mosaic of Facts: Inside the Information Web

RT (2014)

Film Review

In this 2014 documentary, free lance journalist Miguel Francis Santiago examines what he refers to as the “information war” between the US and Russia over recent events in Ukraine.

He begins by looking at evidence uncovered by late investigative journalist Robert Parry that the 2014 coup in western Ukraine was actually a US-sponsored “color revolution” to remove a democratically elected president (Viktor Yanukovych) and replace him with pro-EU/pro-NATO Petro Poroshenko.

Parry’s evidence pointed to open collaboration between former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the fascist and neo-Nazi Svoboda Party that (based on a 2012 BBC investigation) has a history of violently targeting Jews and ethnic Russians.

Santiago goes on to review a slew of widely promoted YouTube videos of both the Maidan uprising and the subsequent referendum in which 93% of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and request membership in the Russian Federation. In examining the origin of various pro-Kiev/anti-Russian videos, he discovers all were produced by people with links to the NED, USAID and/or the US State Department.

The film also includes interviews with retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, aid to former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Naomi Wolfe, former political advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore; geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser; and Peter Joseph, producer of the radical Zeitgeist film series.

Santiago uses these various sources to paint an extremely sophisticated picture of closely interlocking relationships between the US corporate plutocracy, US intelligence agencies and America’s so-called free press.

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*”Color revolutions” is the term used  to describe a series of failed “revolutions” in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa funded by the CIA, State Department and George Soros. The intent was to use popular uprisings to install more US-friendly regimes.

**National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a so-called non-governmental organization funded mainly by the CIA and State Department, used extensively to promote regime change via popular unrest.

***USAID is an agency of the State Department used extensively to promote regime change via popular unrest.