Well good news I guess!?! The Kuzuryu event never once’s says he’s an Avatar of YHVH, only that he’s a guardian dragon of Japan(the typhoons that stopped invasions were him). Liberators basically fought him until he considered them and the filthy modern era of Japan to be worthy of existing, and not destroy it when an UltraNationalist attempted to have Kuzuryu overthrow the government to “make Japan great again”.

« I think these [recent Tory] governments have been too terrible to make fun of. I think they’ve been incompetent and corrupt and I’m not going to make jokes to give them time off. »

— Actor Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who, The Thick of It, etc.) at The Guardian commenting on the last few Conservative governments in the UK.

You know that things are bad when a government is too terrible even for comedy.

The site Britain Elects projects that if a general election were held today, Labour would more than double its seats in the House of Commons. The Lib Dems would rebound nicely as well. Though the Tories would lose about 58% of their seats. The Scottish National Party (SNP), mixed in with Others on this graphic, would probably take a hit due to recent scandals.

An election needs to be called in the next 12 months. There had been some speculation a few months ago about a spring election. But Rishi Sunak may be thinking that the longer he waits, the greater the chance of a political miracle for the Tories.

There are by-elections scheduled for February 15th in the constituencies of Kingswood and Wellingborough. One in Blackpool South is also likely. All three of those seats were won by Conservatives in 2019. If they managed to hold on to just one of those seats they would probably be overjoyed.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The largest faction in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has decided to disband, a lawmaker said Friday, as a political funds scandal involving the group formerly led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has deepened public distrust in politics.The decision came shortly after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to dissolve the party's fourth-biggest faction that he led until December and former LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai expressed an intention to disband his fifth-largest group.Earlier in the day, Kishida said the dissolution of the faction, which he headed, is aimed at restoring public trust amid the political funds scandal.In the party's largest faction, several junior members had told Ryu Shionoya, who is the de facto head, that the group with nearly 100 members should be disbanded as soon as possible.The faction once led by Abe has played a crucial role in decision-making processes within the party, including the selection of the party's leader, who typically becomes prime minister.In its history, the LDP, which has dominated Japanese politics for most of the period since 1955, has previously dissolved its factions, but its lawmakers then created groups again. The factions have served mainly to help lawmakers obtain campaigning funds and ministerial posts.Kishida also said Friday that the LDP needs to come up with new rules on how to properly manage its policy study groups.The LDP has come under intense scrutiny over the fundraising scandal, with the Abe faction suspected of failing to report hundreds of millions of yen in revenue from fundraising parties over many years. Public outrage has pushed approval ratings for Kishida's Cabinet down sharply.Kishida, who quit his faction in response to the scandal, told reporters Friday that the public views the factions with "skeptical eyes."He launched an internal reform panel earlier this month to establish rules to enhance the transparency of funds raised by the LDP groups, promising to compile an interim report next week.On Friday, prosecutors indicted a number of accountants and lawmakers from three factions, including Kishida's group, on suspicion of failing to report political funds.But they said they did not indict executives of the three factions due to a lack of evidence, despite mounting criticism over the scandal.

Hosted by Tamara Khandaker

An excellent report

Slain former prime minister Shinzo Abe was the son of a foreign minister, and grandson of another prime minister, Nobusuke Kishi. Grandpa Kishi was a member of the wartime junta and was arrested by the Americans as a suspected war criminal. But he escaped the hangman and in the mid-1950s helped found the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled Japan ever since. Some people joke Japan is a one-party state. It isn't. But it's reasonable to ask why Japan continues to re-elect a party run by an entitled elite, which yearns to scrap American-imposed pacifism, but has failed to improve living standards for 30 years.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, ‘Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past’, BBC

MAY 8, 2023

Ninety percent of prefectural assembly members with ties to the Unification Church were re-elected in the unified local elections in April, but their popularity showed signs of waning, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.

The unified elections were the first collective nationwide vote held since the Unification Church came under fire again for its fund-collection methods following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July last year, apparently over his ties to the religious group.

According to an Asahi Shimbun survey conducted in August and September last year, 292 of the 2,314 responding prefectural assembly members acknowledged their connections with the church, now formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The ties included attendance at Unification Church-related meetings or events, and receiving support from the group in election campaigns.

The terms for 251 church-connected assembly members expired in spring. Of them, 228 sought re-election in the April 9 elections held in 41 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, while 23 members did not run due to age or other reasons.

Of these candidates, 206, or 90.4 percent, were re-elected. Twenty-two members, or 9.6 percent, lost their seats.

Among those re-elected, 47, or around 23 percent, ran uncontested.

More than 80 percent of the church-tied prefectural assembly members were from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Among all 1,111 LDP incumbents who ran in the local assembly elections, 98 members, or 8.8 percent, were defeated.

Of all 228 candidates who confirmed their ties to the church, 118 gained fewer votes than in the previous election, while 42 garnered more ballots.

It is not clear if the church ties affected vote counts for 68 of the candidates because they ran uncontested in either of the two latest elections, or won in a by-election held within the past four years.

However, some candidates lost several thousand to 10,000 votes compared to their tallies in the previous election after their connections with the church became known.

Setsuko Sakuraba, 65, an LDP candidate, sought a second term in the Niigata prefectural assembly from the electoral district of Joetsu city.

But she was defeated in the election after gaining 9,536 votes. That was 2,459 votes fewer than her total in the previous election, when she placed fourth and gained one of the five assembly seats for the city.

Sakuraba had attended Unification Church-related events and received support in her campaign from people connected to the group.

These ties were reported in local newspapers and The Asahi Shimbun.

After her election loss, Sakuraba said about her church ties, “It’s hard to say how much, but there must have been a significant impact (on the election results.)”

She said someone had placed stickers with words “Unification Church endorsed candidate” on her campaign posters in Joetsu city.

About 50 to 60 of these stickers were found, she said.

In the Tochigi prefectural assembly election, 82-year-old Kazuyoshi Itabashi of the LDP was elected for a national record 14th straight time.

Itabashi gained 10,411 votes in the election four years ago, but this time he received 7,674 ballots, down by 2,737.

He also received the fewest votes among the five elected candidates representing the Oyama city and Nogi town electoral district.

“I think there was a slight decrease in votes,” he said after the election.

In September last year, reports surfaced that Itabashi was serving as head of the prefectural association of a church-related organization called the Federation for World Peace.

He resigned from the position.

Before the election, a Buddhist organization that had supported Itabashi told him that it would withhold its support because of his connection to the Federation for World Peace.

The Unification Church’s public relations department told The Asahi Shimbun, “Our organization has never had involvement with specific candidates or political parties.”

The assassination of Shinzo Abe has been on my mind for the past few months for a number of reasons, but chief among them is how it revealed that the Liberal Democratic Party, the de facto ruling party of Japan, had been taking marching orders from the Unification Church (a cult that originated in South Korea). I can’t stress enough that the LDP is a nationalistic conservative party that has appealed to xenophobia towards non-native Japanese, especially immigrants/citizens of Korean descent. They’ve also gone to great lengths to deny Japan’s war crimes during World War II, including the way the Imperial Japanese military forced Korean woman to be “comfort women” (read: sex slaves) for Japanese soldiers. To contextualize this for Americans, this would be like learning that America’s Republican Party has secretly been taking orders from the Taliban despite popularizing and spreading Islamophobia for the last few decades.

My Number Card and Digital & Analog (Essay)

Japanese Liberal Democratic Party members are not familiar with the difference between digital and analog.

Digital should be used for commercial calculations, and analog should be used for scientific calculations. Most of the Liberal Democratic Party members come from commercial backgrounds, and although they can use an abacus, they cannot use a slide rule. The abacus writes money down to the last digit without any errors, but in scientific calculations, there is a concept that 3 or 4 significant digits are sufficient. It is meaningless to line up numbers with dozens of digits.

Computers are digital, but you need analog calculators to design them. After all, computers are the products of science.

It has been a long time since this slide rule was banished from mathematics education in Japan. Instead, computers that only track numerical accuracy are disgustingly recommended. Idiots who can only be in the humanities is degrading the sciences. In fact, with a computer, "you don't have to think," but with a slide rule, "you need a brain." My number card is developed in the context of the above.

I haven't registered for this card yet because I consider it unnecessary.

Rei Morishita

マイナンバーカードとデジタル&アナログ（エッセイ）

日本の自民党員は、デジタルとアナログの違いをよく知らない。

デジタルは商用計算、アナログは理系計算に用いるのが本義であり、本来使い分けられるべきものなのだ。だいたい自民党員には商科出身の者が多く、ソロバンは使えても計算尺は使えない者ばかりだ。ソロバンは、金銭を誤りなく最後の桁まで記すが、理系の計算では「有効数字」という3桁か４桁で足りるという概念がある。数十桁も数字を並べること自体無意味なのだ。

コンピュータはデジタルだが、それを設計するにはアナログの計算機が必要なのだ。なにしろ理科系の産物がコンピュータなのだから。

この計算尺が日本の数学教育から追放されて久しい。代わりに数字の正確さのみ追うコンピュータがいやらしいほど推奨されている。文科系でしかありえないバカが、理系を貶めている。実際、コンピュータを使うと、「考える必要はなくなる」が、計算尺を使うには「頭脳が必要である」。以上の脈絡で展開されているのが、マイナンバーカードだ。

私はこのカードは、不必要だと考えるので、いまだに登録はしていない。

I TRAMONTI SONO LA PROVA CHE ANCHE UNA FINE PUÒ ESSERE BELLA!

Blatantly Partisan Party Review VIII (NSW 2023): Liberal Democratic Party

Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022

What I said before: “This is a cynical and callous party for people who lack empathy. Its economic and social policies are destructive; its approach to firearms is dangerous; its blinkered hostility to government accepts no possibility it can be used for—or that there even is such a thing as—collective good.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: Welcome to the worst of far-right libertarianism, now with a generous helping of covid conspiracism. You have been warned.

Recommendation: Give the Liberal Democratic Party a weak or no preference.

Website: https://www.ldp.org.au/nsw

Top 9 events of 1980

1981 - The wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles

In the media, the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles seemed like a fairytale. It was certainly the most important event of the year to British Media, Diana and Charles' marriage, would provide drama for years to come even after their divorce 15 years later, in 1996. The events taking place after their divorce changing peoples view of the monarchy to this day.

1982 - Falklands War

The defining military conflict for Britain in the 1980s. the Falklands War, started when Argentina occupied the British dependent territories of the Falkland Islands as well as South Georgia and. the Sandwich Islands. Hostilities were 10 weeks long and the British military response resulted in Argentina's 'waving of the white flag'. Interestingly, the war helped to improve life for both the Islanders and the Argentinians, the former having their British citizenship restored and economy boosted, while the latter saw the government's military image crumble and democracy restored the next year.

1983 - Thatcher wins landslide

Another outcome, positively or negatively viewed, of the Falklands War for Britain was the boost in popularity that Margaret Thatcher received for the successful outcome. Favourable opinion polls for the Conservative Party left Labour and Liberal/Social Democratic Party Alliance far behind. In cosequence, the Tories gained 58 seats in the 1983 General Election and secured another term as Prime Minister for Margaret Thatcher.

1984 - Miner's Strike

Starting on the 6th of March in 1984, the Miner's Strike was a walkout in protest of coal mine (also known as colliery) closures in the UK by Thatcher's Conservative government. The National Union of Mineworkers struck for a year until many returned to work when the Union pay ran out. This dramatically reduced the power of the union to negotiate with the government which arguably made the situation worse for both miners and customers, who switched to gas or found other providers.

1985 - Live Aid

Founded by musicians and philanthropists Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, Live Aid was a benefit concert for famine relief in Ethiopia held simultaneously at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and Wembley Stadium in London. Acts in London included Adam Ant, Sting, Phil Collins, U2, Dire Straits, David Bowie, The Who, and Queen, amongst other. The concerts raised over $127 million for famine relief.

1986 - Major industries privatised

A major goal of the Thatcher government was to privatise many industries that had been nationalised in the early 20th century. Amongst the industries that went private within a couple years of 1986 included British Gas, British Airways, the National Bus Company, Rolls-Royce, Council Houses and many more. The privatisation was pushed aggressively by the Tories who relied on their overwhelming majority to accomplish their political goals. Pushback from the public and a weakened Conservative government led to a slowing of these efforts.

1987 - Thatcher wins third general election for Conservatives

In what might have been a reality check for some of the Tories' more aggressive policies since the landslide in 1983, the Conservative Party lost 21 seats in Parliament after the 1987 General Election. While still enough to give Margaret Thatcher another go at Prime Minister, nothing was really the same. Pushback against privatisation led Conservatives to pursue other issues and sometimes individual agendas and was arguably the beginning of the end for Margaret Thatcher's premiership.

1988 - Liberal Democratic Party Forms

The previous alliance between the Liberal Party and the Socialist Democratic Party had between around since the 1970s but in ten years had failed to achieve its goal of supplanting Labour as the UK's other major political party. In response to the 1987 General Election, in 1988, the two merged to become the Social and Liberal Democratic Party eventually just known simply as the Liberal Democratic Party eventually just Lib Dems.

1989 - Tim Berners-Lee invents the world wide web

Arguably the most significant technological advance of the 20th Century, the world wide web (or web as we know it today), was the creation of Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. It was the product of Berners-Lee's merger of hypertext with the internet to create an information sharing network amongst researchers. The first public web pages appeared only four years later and has revolutionised our world.

I'm going to tell you something that people are not going to like it. I have been called the N word twice on Twitter when Ryan Dorsey was still the owner way before Elon Musk came I to the picture and no one bat an eye. People have been writing hateful statement on Twitter for years before and during the woke era of Twitter. So the woke mobs needs to go away. I don't want to hear their complaints on Tumblr. I had deactivated my Twitter account a couple of weeks before the media reported Elon Musk was going to buy Twitter, so that was earlier this year. I say I feel very pleased and very calm since I got rid of Twitter. The people on there were so messy and miserable including the woke gang and the cancel culture gang I couldn't take it anymore. I agree hate speech shouldn't be free speech. However, if I say Joe Biden and the democrats are very lousy is it hate speech coming from my perspective? No, so learn the difference between hate speech and free speech. I'm no fan of Elon Musk, but twitter wasn't clean and innocent either before he bought it. So quit the crap because I'm not here for it. A few months ago on twitter my sister told me some guy who happens to be black went off at her and called her names because she wasn't dark skin and she shouldn't be talking about colorism. Mind you my sister isn't a lighter complexion. So black twitter were problematic too. Twitter were letting them get away with hateful tweets.

Japan PM Kishida slams ruling party event with scantily-clad dancers

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has slammed a gathering of ruling party members last November that involved scantily-clad dancers.

This is the latest in a string of other scandals that the LDP has been confronted with, most notably one over a fundraising scandal involving the party's most powerful faction.

The mother of Abe Shinzo’s assassin was financially exploited [now confirmed by the Unification Church to be them]

▲ Shinzo Abe at a UPF (Moonie front org) event in 2022

EDIT: As of July 9, 2022, Gendai Business has confirmed that the suspect's mother was a Unification Church member.

EDIT: As of July 11, 2022, Unification Church says Abe shooter's mother is follower  LINK

NHK has reported that Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who shot and murdered Shinzo Abe, had a grudge against a certain organization and believed that Abe had connections to it. He has told police that his mother joined this group and donated a large amount of money, which ruined their family's life.

The name of the religion is not being made public yet by the police, though some of the Japanese media have named the Unification Church. ... Some members have confirmed that Yamagami’s mother attended the Nara Church, which is currently closed and dealing with reporters. Hyung Jin Moon, son of Sun Myung Moon and leader of the schismatic Sanctuary Church (Rod of Iron Ministries), is currently agitating followers on a tour through Japanese cities. He was in Nara last week. 

The suspect has revealed the name of the group to police, and stated his original intention was to murder an official of the group. The targeted official also has not been publicly named. 

In a video of the event, you can see Yamagami looking to the left and right of Abe. He may have been looking for the official then.

There is speculation that this murder was motivated by the financial exploitation of the Unification Church, though there is good reason to also suspect Soka Gokkai, as they have their own political party Komeito, which is in coalition with Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, and are also known to make millions of dollars from their membership.

The local UC is at the same station where the murder occurred. The next closest UC churches are at least an hour away by train.

It is well known in Japan that Abe’s grandfather had a strong relationship with the Unification Church. The Church’s headquarters in Tokyo was on property owned by Kishi, next door to his residence. Kishi often would see members cleaning up the neighborhood, and hearing them pray and sing. He would speak to young members and vocally support the UC’s anti-communist activities.

Shinzo Abe has maintained this relationship with the UC in order to secure votes, as UC members are known to actively vote and be willing to campaign and mobilize. (Soka Gokkai is known to mobilize their members as well.)

Shinzo Abe has addressed several church-affiliated events the past few years, including the September 12, 2021 Rally of Hope and the February 13, 2022 World Summit. Abe’s relationship with the UC has existed since at least his first cabinet.

▲ Nobusuke Kishi and Mr Kuboki at the UC headquarters in Tokyo

On the UC’s relationship with Kishi and the LDP:

By the early 1970s, a number of LDP politicians were using Unification Church members as campaign workers. While the politicians were required to pledge to visit the Church’s headquarters in Korea and receive Reverend Moon’s lectures on theology, it did not matter whether they were members of the Church. Actual Church members – so-called “Moonies” – were sent by the Federation to serve without compensation as industrious and highly valued campaign workers.

In return, for many years the Church enjoyed protection from prosecution by Japanese authorities for their often fraudulent and aggressive sales and conversion tactics.

. . . 

A list prepared by the Japan Communist Party of 126 LDP and DSP politicians who used “volunteers” from the Federation for Victory over Communism to staff their campaigns includes Ozawa Ichiro, Hashimoto Ryutaro, and other senior party leaders. In the 1990 general election, the Unification Church announced that it had provided financial and campaign support to more than one hundred Japanese Diet members.

As a measure of the influence Moon enjoyed in Japan, in 1992 the government gave him special permission to enter the country even though Japanese law forbids entry to a foreign national who has served more than year in jail. Moon had served eighteen months in U.S. jail for tax evasion and had been barred from entering Japan on these grounds for nearly a decade. In March 1992, Kanemaru Shin, vice president of the LDP and the head of the largest faction within the party, intervened on Moon’s behalf with the Minister of Justice.

Updated on Saturday, July 9, 2022

How Moon bought protection in Japan (on Moon's connections to Kishi and organized crime) Three Moon girls woo Prime Minister Kishi of Japan The Mystical, Occult Underbelly of South Korea’s Fascism

After Tetsuya Yamagami’s mother was recruited into the Unification Church her three children had nothing to eat. The Unification Church / Family Federation for World Peace and Unification had taken everything, with no regard for the well-being of the family. Tetsuya Yamagami was a teenager when his mother was recruited.

Atsuko Hong: Another Japanese Member Who Murdered a UC Leader Over  Fraud Violent Direct Action in the Unification Church

Shocking video of UC of Japan leader demanding money

Moon extracted $500 million from Japanese female members Behind the Bastards podcast: Part One: The Moonies Are So Much Worse Than You Could Possibly Imagine Part Two: The Moonies Are So Much Worse Than You Could Possibly Imagine

Partnership Certificates Hit Tokyo

Tokyo One Step Closer to Same-Sex Marriage

Partnership certificates aren’t same-sex marriage, but they’re a big step forward for Tokyo and Japan. Japan is the only country left in the G7 group which doesn’t yet recognize same-sex marriage. Most polling indicates the Japanese people are in support of it, but the government has kept one foot firmly mired in tradition. Earlier this year, a district court in Osaka ruled that the existing…

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Two affiliated groups of the Unification Church sought to persuade ruling Liberal Democratic Party members to agree on policies they wished to promote in exchange for political endorsement in past elections, lawmakers said Thursday.

Hideyuki Teshigawara, who heads the Unification Church's reform promotion headquarters, admitted that one of its affiliated groups, the Federation for World Peace, attempted to encourage some LDP lawmakers to sign a document incorporating the policies it wanted to realize.

▲ Hideyuki Teshigawara, who heads the Unification Church's reform promotion headquarters, speaks at a press conference in Tokyo on Oct. 20, 2022. (Kyodo)

Sources close to the Unification Church said the two affiliated organizations appeared to have contacted dozens of ruling party members across the nation, while later in the day, LDP lower house lawmaker Hiroaki Saito said he signed such a document.

At least three other LDP members acknowledged that they had received such a document from an affiliated group of the Unification Church.

The organization has been accused of forcing its followers to make financially ruinous donations, as well as engage in "spiritual sales," in which followers pressure people to purchase vases and other items for exorbitant prices. Such practices were sometimes accompanied by coercive threats, such as that not agreeing to do so would bring bad fortune upon them and their families.

Despite the latest revelations, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a parliamentary session that he believes the attempt by the affiliated organizations to affect public policy has had no impact on the LDP's policymaking processes, adding his party will carefully look into the issue.

Relations between the LDP and the Unification Church have been under heavy scrutiny lately, with fears growing that the group, founded by a staunch anti-communist in South Korea in 1954, may have exerted undue political influence by establishing ties with ruling lawmakers.

The documents that lawmakers received included policies which encouraged amending Japan's pacifist Constitution, bolstering the country's security capabilities and taking a cautious stance against legalizing same-sex marriage.

On Monday, Kishida pledged to launch a probe on the Unification Church, after the government received over 1,700 telephone consultations from followers and others complaining about its practices over a period of less than one month through Sept. 30.

The government is expected to request a court to order the Unification Church to dissolve as a religious corporation, if the investigation confirms that the organization, often labeled as a cult, has violated any laws, whether criminal or civil cases.

Depending on the judgement by a court, the outcome could mean the Unification Church would lose its status as a religious corporation and be deprived of tax benefits, although it would still be able to operate as an entity.

Teshigawara said at a news conference on Thursday that the Unification Church will "sincerely" accept the probe, while apologizing for those who claim to be victims of the group "from the bottom of our hearts."

The religious organization has been under spotlight after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot during an election campaign speech in early July. The man accused of murdering Abe is the son of a member of the Unification Church.