You may question it but it’s not a question that China needs to protect the sea lanes and it can’t count on another country who could also be the one trying to choke China off from the seas. Also the recent piracy incident off the east African coast is another example since African trade has become significant.

And why a carrier to meet those interests rather than building other types of ships.

Reminds me of a quote that I once read in soc.culture.japan, back in the ’90s, probably by a fellow Chinese Netter; and that impressed me so much that I still remember it: “At least now they know how it feels to be occupied by a foreign army.”

But its not quite the same. Japan is the one that invaded and occupied its neighbors not Okinawa. Okinawa at the time, despite being Japanese territory, was not quite considered Japanese as the Japanese gov’t still ranked Okinawans lower and as a subclass. Okinawa during WWII was still undergoing a “Japanization” process in which Okinawans were still being forced to learn Japanese and forbidden to speak the Okinawan language. To put it simply, they were undergoing similar things Japan were doing to Korea, Taiwan, etc. The following US military occupation saw Japan eventually being left to control their own fate, but Okinawa was still a US territory until the 70s and continues to house most of the US military bases (in addition to the regular JSDF bases). If some bitter Chinese netter enjoys seeing foreign military occupation of Japan, then let him be disappointed because its mostly in Okinawa, not Tokyo (which the one who directed the invasion, and continues to hold many politicians unapologetic to it).

Most Okinawans are sympathetic towards what happened to the rest of its neighbors as similar things happened there. Even the Okinawan Peace Memorial dedicated to those who fallen in the Battle of Okinawa, contains names of Okinawans who died.. as well as Japanese soldiers and even American soldiers and other people who fought on the other side. There’s even a dedicated monument to Korean soldiers forced to fight for the Japanese. How often do you see memorials that list names of so many types of combatants and civilians.

ISTR from somewhere that just after WWII, the Brits occupied part of Japan for a very short while?
You happen to have any idea about for how many years, and at which air bases?

Sadly I do not know which, but I would imagine it would be somewhere in the south west. There was a plan to partition Japan into zones like how Berlin was.. the UK was to get something around Kyushu or the Chugoku region I believe, perhaps they had something there. Obviously that plan never came into fruition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ3-Xa2Ivxg&feature=channel

i check videos in american elections for candidates-
is that old man realy republican ,he sem more left then obama?

I wouldn’t really say left. He’s very libertarian and his views tend to be typical of that..

i.e:
strong free trade
minimal foreign intervention
very small government
lower taxes
more state power than federal power
people have the right to do nearly anything they can do as long as it doesn’t affect the rights of others, etc.

in theory (and I really emphasize this part), libertarians will share similar views with mainstream conservatives on smaller government, lower taxes and other economic/financial areas.. but they can differ strongly on foreign policy and domestic issues that tend to involve religious values.

Here’s a semi- Raptor-ized version of the PAK-FA T-50 lineart.

I’ve seen this model and variants of this model over the net. Is this considered the most accurate design of what the PAK-FA may look like?

Politicians like Obama make things worse through confiscatory tax schemes and .gov mandates that put fear into the business community. The business community reacts by reducing their expenses (firing employees) and postponing plans for expanding their business (i.e. will not create new wealth and new jobs). Everybody loses in that scenario.

Its true that businesses prefer more deregulation and create new wealth, and that those supporting this ideology argue against bigger state involvement out of fears of corruption, but the reverse can also be argued as businesses do not work in the interest of the country but of themselves, or in other words have the potential to over exploit.

Greenspan himself recently stated that he made a grave miscalculation that the market would police itself, which didn’t happen.

the US and Western Europe which followed similar financial systems are now going to experience greater government involvement in vital areas of the economy (Iceland now already has direct control over its 3 failed banks) and even Bush and McCain will be doing/supporting the same things because of reality. Unfortunately some people seem to automatically equate any kind of government involvement automates to socialism (I bet Scandinavia, Japan and Singapore must seem like communist countries to them with all that state involvement, let alone actual communist countries).

I see alot of criticism of Carter too. Carter, as well as Ford before him, presided over a time when there was a major shift in the global economy. You had newly industrialized countries offering cheap products and the beginning of mass outsourcing which created major economic chaos in the US, which at the time was on a system that relied on high wages in order to counter over production of products (i.e paying people more, so they can spend more). This didn’t fare too well when countries in Asia and Latin America with their lower wages, became too competitive. Only in the Reagan administration did we see another shift to adapt to these NICs but now we’re seeing flaws in this new economic model.

Reagan only served in some PR unit as in making movies for the Army. I think everyone in WWII has to serve somehow.

Jimmy Carter served after the war as an enlisted officer onboard things from ships to submarines, and he was handpicked by Admiral Rickover himself to be part of a core elite officer corps that would man the first USN nuclear submarines. He had a degree in nuclear physics as part of the requirement. Carter cites Rickover as the person with the most influence over him aside from his parents.

As for having “executive” experience, Palin certainly doesn’t know how the Vice Presidency works (or ever read the US Constitution) if she thinks the VP heads the US Senate.

on the subject of Carter and Reagan,
its pretty interesting that at the time of their elections
what are now considered key red states, were blue, and blue states were red..
so what happened since then that made the switch?

I think you confused the bases in Hawaii with the bases in Okinawa…

no, I was using the bases in Oahu which I mentioned (an island in Hawaii) as a comparison with the ones in Okinawa, particularly on how both are small islands with large numbers of bases, yet differ strongly in where they are located within the island.

I suspect the people that complain about US bases in their countries, would complain if the US bases closed up shop and left too, due to the impact on the local economic situation.

as said earlier, not every country and every base faces the same circumstances. Some have found economic importance in those bases, other’s found it more of a problem, and often its a bit of both, its not a clear cut issue.

However in Okinawa, which is less than 1% of Japan’s territory but contains 75% of the US military bases in the entire country, it has been a big issue (especially in an area that has very little land to begin with)

There’s lots of bases there, and many of the major ones are right in the middle of the city, and that’s a large problem (the planes also follow different noise and environmental rules since they are not in the US).

People can’t exactly move since the bases are literally in the middle and built with out the consent of the people. It was built through a bulldoze/bayonet policy. Houses were bulldozed despite protest, and those protesting were chased out by soldiers with bayonets. Politicians who ran campaigns against the bases and won in a democratic elections, were arrested on trumped up charges. And more recently within the past decade, one of the land owners refused to renew his lease to the base, won the support of the governor as well, but was still unable to get rid of the US military base.

As a region that was once an independent country, annexed by Japan, then forced by the Japanese to participate in WWII, fight against the Americans in the only land war between the two, then became an American territory and contain most of Japan’s bases.. there’s no public love for Japan’s administration either.

One of the bases has disappeared (and this was located in the middle of the city as well), and it has been transformed into a major shopping district that’s thriving. Of course, there’s still some environmental contamination issues left over from the base and that will still be there for a while.

To sum it up, the bases were built by forcing people off their ancestral lands and nearly every attempt to either peacefully protest or democratically address the issue has met with mostly failures and frustrations. Most bases in America tend to be located away from the city, but this situation is different in that it is IN the city, planes fly very low (and in fact have crashed into school buildings), development of the main cities are limited because there’s no land, and then the crime issues from unruly soldiers. These issues really affect how negative local opinion is over towards American bases. To be fair, most people here can separate the difference between US policy and regular Americans and oppose one and not the other. Most Americans that come are very friendly, and after living in Okinawa for some time, begin to agree with the locals over the base issues.