Author: tomokin

Summary

Donald Trump has won in the American presidential election. Some people say that the false information shown on the newsfeed of Facebook had a huge effect on this result.
Zuckerberg said the idea that false news on Facebook influenced election is very crazy.
But he allowed false information had been shown on Facebook. Although Zuckerberg did not say how quickly the measures which detect incorrect news would be in place, he said that Facebook is making effort to improvement.

My opinion

Following the U.S. presidential election, I realized the power of media because Trump have gained public support through some media.
Today, we can easily post anything on the SNS. We always get various information in Facebook, Twitter, and so on. But it is difficult to judge whether the news are true.
Facebook should take effective measures against fake news as soon as possible because all informations have a possibility to have big influence. But it will be impossible to exclude all false information from the Facebook, so we must have media literacy. I think criticizing Facebook is irrelevance in this case. The people who couldn’t find out wrong information should be blamed.

Summary

Hilary Clinton who tries to be first female president is more desperate for political fund raising than other candidates. Her main financial resources is California State. She holds political fund parties with stars many times and easily raises money by ticket price. California fundraisers raised just over $100 million, according to CNN. So California is Golden State ATM for her. She has ever invite many star, for example Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Ricky Martin and Katy Perry. Hilary has strong connection with stars.

My opinion

I didn’t know anything about American politician’s political resources. I was surprised that donations to politician by individual citizens are legal in USA. Most Japanese think this political parties are not good in Japan and it may be illegal. I think this system is bad because in this system, connections of a politician individual have a big influence in a presidential election. The candidate who don’t have power can’t compete with such powerful candidate.
I have serious doubts about the use of its large sum of money. I think American presidential election is too long. To be honest, I have already got tired about this big event.

Summary

President Barack Obama’s administration estimated that between 64 and 116 civilians have died during the years 2009-2015 from U.S. drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Human rights groups, however, were unsatisfied by the government’s disclosed figures, which came in far lower than independent estimates of civilian causalities. Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project said “The American public can’t be confident that the government is using lethal force legally and wisely with a disclosure that’s so limited as to be virtually meaningless.”

My opinion

My image of drones was flying over sky at a disaster site with a camera. But after reading this news, my image of them has been changed. I didn’t know that drones are used for killing people so much. I think drones should be regulated because there are too much ways to use for wrong purposes, such as military attack, terrorism and breach of privacy.
Many people come up with more bad use than good use of them. Drones should be used for only life-saving. Drones also have ethical problem. Military personnel who controls them will do the attacks like a FPS game, and lost humanity finally. American government should not be taken this problem lightly.

I believe that SAMURAI JAPAN will win the championship in WBC 2017.

World Baseball Classic, an international meet of baseball, is going to be held in around next March. Japan won the championship in the 1st meet and 2nd meet, but lost the championship in the last meet. I always watch baseball, and I think now Japan can win the championship in the next meet. I’d like to explain the reasons why I think so.

The biggest reason is the strength of pitchers. Japanese pitchers have better ability than players of any other countries. For example there is a pitcher called Shohei Otani in Japan. His fast ball is always around 160km/h, and has very high quality breaking balls. He closed up the Korean batting lineup through the sixth inning perfectly last year. As we know, it’s said that 70% of baseball game is decided by pitcher, so Japanese pitching strength is a big weapon. There are many other good pitchers in Japan, such as Sugano, Maeda, Makita, Norimoto, and so on.

The second reason is high hitting skills and base-running skills. Tetsuto Yamada and Yuki Yanagita who are the best baseball players in Japan achieved the great record called “triple three” last season. If a player records batting average more than .300, hits home runs more than 30 times and steals a base more than 30 times, this is triple three. In the long history of NPB, only 10 players achieved triple three, and two of them are now in the same team as SAMURAI JAPAN! This is a miraculous situation. Japan has suffered from the score power so far, but now in Japan, there are a lot of players who have high batting average and who can steal a base including Yamada and Yanagita.

The third reason is Japanese unique cheering style. Japanese cheer players by singing songs. It’s different from other countries, and it makes the stadium Japanese atmosphere. This seems to be a big power for players.

In conclusion, SAMURAI JAPAN is a wonderful team in every aspect. However, there is a rumor that United States summons Major leaguer, and become serious about WBC. If it is not true, I can believe that SAMURAI JAPAN will win the championship. I want Japanese monster players such as Otani and Yamada to be recognized in the world.

Summary

A US military employee was arrested on suspicion of dumping a local woman’s body.
After this accident, the curfew was given for military personnel in Okinawa. It prohibits the drinking out of base and going out after 0:00. In spite of such situation, a US Navy soldier has been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. Now, there are plans to relocate the Futenma airbase, but after a series of alleged crimes by US military personnel, many residents want to see it removed altogether.

My opinion

The US military bases may be very noisy and scary thing for people of Okinawa. It is natural to think that they want to remove them. However, I think that the US base is necessary for the security of Japan because we don’t have military power, especially nuclear weapon. Now, the neighborhood country, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons and can aim at Japan. The deterrent by the American nuclear weapon is necessary for Japan. The presidential election is held in United States now. If Trump become the President, the Japan-U.S. alliance would be broken and US forces would withdraw from Japan. And, China will take a more provocative attitude toward Japan.
It is very bad diplomatically. I think this is difficult problem. It is ideal to build good relation between Okinawa’s people and military personnel.