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Japan Moon Probe Snaps First Photos
mrcgran writes "Space.com reports, "Almost one month after Japan's successful launch of the Kaguya lunar probe, the unmanned observatory has begun its first major activities in orbit around the moon. In addition to snapping its first lunar images, the probe jettisoned one of two 110-pound (50-kilogram) "baby" satellites that will help create a detailed gravity map of the moon." The major objectives of the "KAGUYA" mission are to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration. "KAGUYA" consists of a main orbiting satellite at about 100km altitude and two small satellites (Relay Satellite and VRAD Satellite) in polar orbit."
I call paranoia. With a strong economy, a military isn't really needed. They can rule you wholesale instead.
Let others boast of martial dash
For we have boldly fought with cash
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
welcome our Japanese mooninite overlords.
[insert Asian version of goatse link]
Table-ized A.I.
[insert Asian version of goatse link]
I'm pretty sure you're talking about www.lemonparty.org
Maybe we should drop nukes on Iraq as well?
No way, we don't want an Iraqi Ishiro Honda Creating more Godzilla, and an endless stream of city destruction analogue cartoons that all seem to require the technical expertise of schoolgirls.
'Ah yes, we need the schoolgirls because their purdah wearing panty flashing abilities, um, well, we just need them, ok?'
There are very few countries I would trust in a foxhole, and only one of them doesn't speak English as the national language. That one is Japan. Japan is so intimately tied with the United States politically, economically, and culturally that to suggest that Japanese rearmament (a frog that has LONG since boiled -- they now have something like the world's 5th largest military) leads to military conflict with the United States is like suggesting that Canada is planning to continue the War of 1812 grudge match at the first provocation.
In some bizzaro world where Japan and the United States had economic hostilities (as opposed to the odd disagreement among friends over import levels, tariffs, and the like), Japan cutting off trade with the US would ruin the nation in a matter of months. (And that is assuming we didn't respond by having the Navy cut off their oil supply, in which case she would quite literally cease to have a modern economy in a matter of weeks.) That is the flipside of them being economically dependent on exports to America and their other overseas markets.
Additionally, debt is a weapon that goes both ways. There is a nice expression -- "When you owe the bank $100,000, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank $100 million, you own the bank." The economic nuclear option for the United States is having a midlevel Treasury functionary say one catastrophically important sentence: "We will not pay interest on the T-bills held by the Japanese government, or anyone they should sell them to, for the duration of the hostilities." Oh, we owed you a trillion dollars? Sorry, our mistake -- the accountant has been fired.
That is a heck of a lot more important with regards to China than it is to Japan, by the way. I really don't mind China investing their profits in the US debt (*somebody* is going to own it, who cares who) -- should they decide to have an attack of stupid and talk about nuking Los Angeles again, we can just threaten them with causing a financial panic on a scale unheard of in history. All of the devastation with many less bodies than threatening to match them in megadeaths.
I call this the economic nuclear option because it would NOT be consequence free -- it would pretty much guarantee a worldwide financial panic. But, hey, if you're talking about a major conflict between two of the richest nations in the world the worldwide financial panic is a given.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I say this to all your things, for this is a robbery.