MMR October 17 2023 - Shout-out to Sacredh

Support

In Western Japan, especially Osaka, there are many volunteer organisations and religious groups. The majority of these organisations are Christian, and provide assistance and emergency meal feeding to the homeless population. This kind of support is also provided in Yokohama.



In August 2002, the "Special Act in regards to Supporting the Autonomy of the Homeless Population" (Japanese: ホームレスの自立の支援等に関する特別措置法) was enacted, and proper support began to be offered by the country, including the first nationwide survey into the homelessness of the country, launched by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in February 2003. A factual investigation was also conducted in April 2007.



People without the income, savings or property to meet the basic necessities of living were able to receive livelihood protection.

Women escaping from domestic violence, or from former partners seeking to restart former relationships, were able to receive support from women's care institutions, refuges, and shelters.

In the case of minors, forms of support such as child welfare institutions were also made available.

Specific aspects

Some specific aspects of Japanese homelessness are due to the social structure of Japanese society. Historically, men were the sole providers for their families. Japanese companies believe that married men work better than unmarried ones do because the former feel more obligations and responsibilities toward their families. Hence, not only elderly men, who face ageism and cannot find employment, but unmarried men over 35 years old have difficulties in finding employment. [15] Furthermore, families usually provide more support for women than they do for men.[16]



Internet cafés and homeless

Main article: Net cafe refugee

As of 2011, Japan is continuing to experience economic recession. For ¥1,500 to ¥2,000 per night homeless people have been staying in Internet cafés or capsule hotels,[17] where they get an individual room (space) and a shower, television, soft drinks and Internet access.[18]

Most reasonable people — by which I mean everyone who isn’t named Rep. Andy Biggs — understand that the chaos in Washington was caused by a small group of Republican House members (Biggs among them) who orchestrated the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy without a clear plan to replace him.



This didn’t go over well with a lot of Republicans.



For example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News, “Ninety-six percent of Republicans voted for McCarthy. 4% voted against him. From my position as a longtime Republican activist, they are traitors. All eight of them should, in fact, be primaried. They should all be driven out of public life. What they did was go to the other team to cause utter chaos.”



Biggs doesn’t believe that he and the seven other Republicans who led the coup (including Arizona Rep. Eli Crane) are responsible for the infighting among House members that has left the body without a speaker during a time when Congress will play vital role in America’s assistance to Israel during the war in Gaza.



Biggs says Washington is a 'cartel town'


Biggs believes the crisis in the House has been caused by … “cartels.”



I am not making that up.



Here’s what Biggs told one interviewer, and even included a clip of it in a post on X (formally Twitter):



“It (House speaker) may well be the job that nobody wants. I’ll give you that. Look, this is the way I look at it. All the things you mentioned are factors. Small majority and difficult circumstances and timing.



Rep. Biggs did NOT create chaos: Or so he says



“But what I will tell you this, that I think is much more critical is that this town is a cartel town. It is controlled by power. Whether it is the K-street lobbyists, the bureaucratic entrenched lobby, you know, and the media, the corporate left-stream media that here, that constitutes the uniparty. And they do not want anything that may actually contest that, expose it.”

An Israeli billionaire businessman and his wife stepped down from their positions on a Harvard University board over the school's response to the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.



Idan Ofer, who owns Quantum Pacific Group, is the world's 81st-richest person, with a net worth of $19.9 billion, per estimates by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.



He's the second-richest person from Israel, per Bloomberg's estimates, behind his brother Eyal Ofer, who is worth around $21.4 billion. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index lists Eyal Ofer as being from Monaco, though he was born in Israel.



Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia Ofer, sat on the executive board of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. They funded a fellowship for Israeli and Palestinian students to study at the school and a building named after them opened on campus in 2017.



But the Ofers are now no longer listed as members of the board on the school's website. They also withdrew a multi-million dollar donation that they planned to make, Hebrew-language news site The Marker reported.



Harvard has been embroiled in controversy after a group of student organizations released a statement saying that they held the Israeli regime "entirely responsible" for the violence unfolding in the region.



Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a series of terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, leading to retaliatory attacks from Israel, including what a UN agency called "almost uninterrupted" bombardments.



As of Sunday, at least 1,300 people have been killed and more than 3,700 injured in Israel, per official Israeli sources cited by the UN. The Palestinian Ministry of Health says that in Gaza, 2,670 Palestinians have been killed and 9,600 injured since the violence erupted.



The Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a joint statement on October 8 blaming Israel for the attacks by Hamas, triggering a huge amount of backlash and accusations of antisemitism.



Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman called on Harvard University to release the names of students who are members of the groups so that companies don't "inadvertently" hire them. Other CEOs and investors have followed suit.



Harvard has struggled to navigate its response to the student groups' statement. In a video on Thursday, Harvard President Christine Gay said that the university rejects terrorism. But she said that Harvard also rejects harassment and intimidation based on people's beliefs and "embraces" a commitment to free expression, including "views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous."



"We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views," Gay said. "But that is a far cry from endorsing them."



Some believe Harvard is not taking enough action against the students whose groups signed the statement.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) defended Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) attempt to overturn the 2020 election, pointing to other Republicans who attempted to do the same.



CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out that Jordan was one of the many Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results, but Crenshaw said that wouldn’t stop him from supporting him. The Texas Republican was not one of the 139 House Republicans at the time who objected to the certification of the election results.



“But a lot of them did that. If I held that grudge, I wouldn’t have friends in the Republican Conference, because a lot of them did that,” Crenshaw said on “State of the Union.”

May 15 marks the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes, and the more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948. As the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq wrote, “the legacy of the Nakba events is that about two-thirds of the Palestinian people became refugees,” while Israel “imposed a system of institutionalized racial discrimination over Palestinians who remained on the land.” Today, there are more than 5.9 million Palestinian refugees, including the descendants of those who fled or were expelled.



Israeli authorities have, pursuant to discriminatory laws, blocked those refugees and their descendants from returning to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Meanwhile, Israeli law entitles Jewish citizens of other countries to settle in Israel or West Bank settlements and become citizens. That means a Jewish citizen of any country who has never been to Israel can move there and automatically gain citizenship, while a Palestinian expelled from his home in what became Israel and languishing for more than 70 years in a refugee camp, cannot.