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"Obama, Japan" redirects here. For the town in Nagasaki, see Obama, Nagasaki.

Obama (, Obama-shi) is a city in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. It faces Wakasa Bay due north of Kyoto, and is about four to seven hours by train from Tokyo.

As of April 1, 2017, the city has an estimated population of 29,213 and a population density of 130 persons per km. The total area is 232.85km.

Obama gained publicity in the United States and elsewhere in 2008, as it shares its name with the then-senator Barack Obama, who was running for President of the United States.

Obama means "little beach" in Japanese.[1]

In the Ritsury period, Obama was the capital of Wakasa Province, one of entrance of continental culture. Many temples related to the Yamato Dynasty are located in Obama, and the city is called "Nara by the sea".

In the Edo period, Obama was the capital of the Obama Domain and was the starting point of the Mackerel Road to Kyoto.

As a result of its location in the Wakasa Province area, which travelers passed through when traveling between China and Kyoto, the area was influenced by Chinese culture for a long period. There are many buildings and houses in the Sancho-machi area of the city whose design was influenced by trade with the Chinese mainland.[2]

The area was established as a city on March 30, 1951 although the area has been inhabited for centuries. Otojir Uratani is currently the mayor of Obama.

Obama is one of the locations where Japanese citizens were abducted by North Korean agents on July 7, 1978.[3][4]

Fishing used to be the main industry, but now it is mostly supported by tourism.[1] Wakasa lacquered chopsticks, agate accessories, and other crafts are made in the area.[5]

Fukui Prefectural University is located in Obama and has been operating only since 1992.[6] However, in this short period, the university's Research Center for Marine Bioresources has been noted for its research of preservation and in the fields of fish embryogenesis, aquaculture stock enhancement, fish disease, and microalgeal bloom.[7] The university also has schools (faculties) of Economics, Nursing, Arts and Sciences, Biotechnology, and others.[8] Medical research is done at the Obama Community Hospital.[9][10] Obama is also home to the Wakasa branch of the Fukui Prefectural Library.

The Omizu-okuri (Water Carrying) Festival is held every March 2 on which water is drawn from the Onyu River and presented to the principal image of the temple. This annual event dates back more than 1,200 years.[5] Local tourist attractions include the Myotsu-ji Temple and the surrounding Karesansui Garden.[2]

The Wakasa Historical and Folk Museum is housed in a large, modern facility. Among other items of local interest, it houses many Jomon period artifacts, including those from the important Torihama shell mound in the area.

Obama is also home to Hosshinji, a working Zen monastery.[11]

Obama has sister and friendship relationships with the following cities.[12]

The city of Obama has received much publicity because it shares its name with former U.S. President Barack Obama. It began when Obama as a Senator gave a 2006 interview to Japanese television network TBS where he noted that, when passing through customs in Narita Airport, the official who inspected his visa said that he was from Obama.[13] The Obama City Hall heard about the interview and the mayor, Toshio Murakami, sent Senator Obama a set of the citys famous lacquer chopsticks, a DVD about the city and a letter wishing him the best. As Senator Obama's presidential campaign progressed, more local businesses began to organize primary parties and put up "Go Obama!" posters, sell "I love Obama" T-shirts, and produce manj (a type of Japanese confectionery) with Senator Obama's face on them. A hula group began in the town in honour of Senator Obama's home state of Hawaii. The troupe visited Honolulu in June to perform at the Pan Pacific Festival.[14]

Obama has since thanked the town for their gifts and support, saying "I look forward to a future marked by the continued friendship of our two great nations and a shared commitment to a better, freer world".[15]

There are a number of Japanese with the surname Obama. Though the former American President is of Kenyan Luo heritage, it is not uncommon for Japanese and East African names to sound alike.[16][17]

As a result of the victory by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, the Mayor of Obama City announced to the Japanese press that he intends to commission a statue of Barack Obama to be put in front of the city hall "as a token of the great historical moment for the name Obama".[18] On January 20, 2009, the day that Barack Obama was sworn into office, the city of Obama celebrated the inauguration with women dancing the hula at the Hagaji Temple.[19]

On November 14, 2009, President Obama specifically acknowledged his connection with Obama by mentioning it and its citizens in a speech at Suntory Hall in Tokyo.[20]

In 2013, Obama mayor Koji Matsuzaki gave a red lacquer pen to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to give to President Obama.[21]

View post:
Obama, Fukui - Wikipedia

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Barack Obama, regarded by the alt-left as the alt-president, was back home in Indonesia for the Fourth of July holiday, and theres clearly something in the water in the Islamic world. Whatever it is, it brings out the missionary in the man that most of us regard as merely a former president.

No sooner had Michelle unpacked the family suitcases eight years ago than Mr. Obama ordered up Air Force One and hurried off to Cairo to make his famous apology to the Muslim world for all the manifold sins America has inflicted on the followers of Muhammad.

He stood in the great hall of Cairo University to tug at his imaginary forelock this after a bow to the Islamic world so deep that he just missed banging his head on the floor and told thousands of assembled Muslims that no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust.

But he proceeded to try. He used the traditional Muslim greeting, assalamu alaykum and spiced his remarks with quotations from the Koran. The holy Koran, he called it, with the pronunciation of the believer he learned as a boy in Indonesia, and assured them that I know civilizations debt to Islam.

He did not remind them that the debt has been marked paid in full with the blood of the thousands who have died in the many expressions of radical Islamic terror.

He showed understanding, in the rapturous account of one London newspaper, if not always acceptance of what one might call the Arab and Muslim narrative. The speech included ample references to dignity and justice against humiliation, words that resonate in Muslim discourse. Self-pity is for sale by the pound throughout the Arab world.

Mr. Obama poured it on in Cairo, demonstrating the hostility toward Israel and the Jews that would become a constant theme over his two terms in the White House. He overruled several aides who urged him not to use the word occupation to describe Israels takeover of territory gained in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Eight years on, Mr. Obama resurrected the spirit of Cairo in his remarks preceding the Fourth of July in Jakarta. He warned the world, and by unmistakable implication the United States and Donald Trump in particular, of the dangers of an aggressive kind of nationalism.

Its been clear for a while that the world is at a crossroads, he said. He recalled growing up in Indonesia and marveled at how the nation had prospered in the years since. But some countries, some developed and some less so, have adopted a more aggressive and isolationist stance. If we dont stand up for tolerance and moderation and respect for others, if we begin to doubt ourselves and all that we have accomplished, then much of the progress that we have made will not continue.

What we will see is more and more people arguing against democracy, we will see more and more people who are looking to restrict freedom of the press, well see more intolerance, more tribal divisions, more ethnic divisions, more religious divisions and more violence.

Well, hear! hear! Who among us would disagree with any of that? What the former president might have said, but didnt, is that the critics of democracy (his own true believers) are the red-hots who want to shut down debate on campus, who would restrict freedom of the press to those who keep control of that freedom and dispense it by the teaspoon as they see fit.

Since he was critiquing everybody, he might have acknowledged his own as the exceptional nation that practices none of the sins he enumerates, and applies by implication to the government of his successor. The challenges of our times, he said, whether economic inequality, changing climate, terrorism, mass migration these are real challenges, and were going to have to confront them together.

But its individual nations were looking at you, America, Israel, Canada, Great Britain that turn out to be the nations that secure the rights of their people. Confronting challenges to personal freedom is a task most of the nations of the world hardly recognize as something useful.

Had Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin shared Mr. Obamas aversion to aggressive nationalism, observed Ira Stoll in the New York Sun on the eve of Independence Day, they would all have been a lot less likely to pledge their own lives, fortunes and sacred honor to what was, after all, a war for the cause of starting a new country.

You can say that again. The alt-president and his followers of the alt-left surely wont. But those are words we all live by on this, and every Independence Day.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief emeritus of The Times.

Go here to read the rest:
Fourth of July speech Obama never made - Washington Times

Attacking the news media is a time-honored White House tactic, says media critic Brian Stelter, but to an unusual degree, this administration has narrowed its sights to one specific organization, which it has deemed part of the political opposition.

Stelter quotes a top White House staffer: Were going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent, she says. We dont need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.

Stelter didnt write those words about President Donald Trump, and the rogue media organization isnt Stelters current employer, CNN. Nor is the White House aide defending the strategy of open hostility from Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Kellyanne Conway.

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Stelter wrote those words in 2009, for The New York Times, and he wrote them about President Barack Obama, who was then in the midst of furious battle with Fox News. In many ways, it was a protracted fight that presaged the one Trump is now waging against CNN and the rest of the mainstream media.

There are several key distinctions between then and now. Fox News commentatorsin particular, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill OReillyfrequently maligned Obama and misrepresented his views, often in ways that seemed racially charged. On the converse, Obama didnt tweet out doctored pro wrestling GIFs or obsessively rail about fake news and ratings.

The Obama-Fox News feud is a reminder that presidents frequently clash with media outlets. In 1993, for example, Jacob Weisberg wrote in Vanity Fair about the White House press corps under Bill Clinton: Four months into the new administration, relations between president and media hit what may have been their post-Watergate low. Eleven years, Ken Auletta wrote in The New Yorker that George W. Bush sees the press as litist and thinks that the social and economic backgrounds of most reporters have nothing in common with those of most Americans.

To supporters of Trump, his criticisms of the press dont differ in substance from those of his predecessors. Rather, the key distinction is that those criticisms are filtered through his bombastic, hyperbolic personality. They are then relayed to the public not through agents of that very press but via Twitter, where those opinions have no constraint but the social networks 140-character limit.

Yet a comparison of Obamas relationship with Fox News to the near-daily skirmishes between Trump and CNN highlights just how remarkable is Trumps war on the mainstream media, how far outside the bounds of normal antagonisms between the White House and the men and women charged with covering it.

Obamas anger at Fox News was justified. In January 2007, Fox & Friends made the false claim that Obama had attended an Islamic school in Indonesia. Two months later, a Democratic debate that was to have been hosted by Fox News was cancelled after the networks chairman, Roger Ailes, deliberately confused Obamas name with that of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, telling media executives in a speech, Its true that Barack Obama is on the move.

Once he became president, Obama decided he had had enough, much as Trump has with CNN. Six months into his presidency, Obama gave an interview to CNBCs John Harwood. During their conversation, Harwood observed that Obama remained the recipient of largely favorable media coverage.

Not so, Obama countered. I've got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.

I assume you're talking about Fox, Harwood said.

He was. Obama had in mind segments like the one in which Fox News commentator Sean Hannity mused, Is President Obama disloyal? One White House aide says, Yes. We have the shocking details. About three weeks after the Harwood interview ran, an op-ed published on the Fox News website called the economy Obamas Katrina, a reference to George W. Bushs inept handling of the devastation that followed the 2005 hurricane that pummeled the Gulf Coast.

Obama will get the blame for his slow response to the current recession, that article said. To the contrary, Obama has been praised for rescuing the economy and bringing the jobless rate down to historic lows.

In discussing that interview on his own show, OReilly offered an assessment that mirrors what many have said of Trump: He's a sensitive guy. And when he gets criticism, he's not used to it. Of course, Obama wasnt tweeting about Fox News at five in the morning.

The feud deepened that September, when Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio host whod recently arrived to Fox News from CNN, got his first scalp, as one blogger put it, by forcing the resignation of White House green jobs adviser Van Jones, whom Beck had depicted as an avowed, self-avowed radical revolutionary communist. (Jones has recently been a ferocious critic of Trump as a CNN commentator.)

Days later, Fox News picked up on a covert video recording in which the community group ACORN, which had supported Obama and was widely disliked by the right, was seen offering advice on tax evasion to a sex worker and her pimp. The video seemed to play on white fearsand prejudicesabout rampant leftism, corrupt democracy and a federal apparatus in the hand of the nations first African-American president.

Those fears coalesced in the Tea Party, a populist movement openly supported by Fox News. On September 12, an estimated 75,000 conservatives affiliated with Tea Party groups marched on Washington. The event was partly sponsored by 9-12 Project, a group affiliated with Beck. Fox News, in other words, was more explicitly tied to the resistance to Obama than CNN has been toTrump.

Several days after that, top Obama adviser David Axelrod met at a Manhattan steakhouse with Ailes, the Fox News chairman. According to reporting by Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times, Ailes had sought the meeting to address rising tensions between the network and the White House. Axelrod, in turn, is said to have countered with the view that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy, in Rutenbergs words.

One wonders what the American public today would think of a secret meeting between CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Trumps top political adviser Stephen K. Bannon. Conspiracy theories would flourish. Then again, this White House will make peace with North Korea before it makes peace with CNN.

Fox News didnt turn to moderation after the Ailes-Axelrod steakhouse summit. It continued its relentless assault on Kevin Jennings, an openly-gay educator appointed by Obama as the assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. In 1988, Jennings, then a teacher, had declined to report a 15-year-old male students relationship with an older man. As far as Fox News was concerned, this made Jennings a sexual predator. Did 'Safe School Czar' Encourage Statutory Rape? was the headline on Fox Nation, a news site within the Fox News constellation.

By the time Stelter wrote his column in mid-October, any possibility of a dtente seemed remote. Instead of governing, the White House continues to be in campaign mode, and Fox News is the target of their attack mentality, charged high-ranking Fox News executive Michael Clemente. The network continued to attack Obama for the next seven years, often with unsubtle intimations of racism. In 2011, for example, Fox Nation referred to Obamas 50th birthday party as a Hip-Hop BBQ.

Obama sometimes hit back. Few things seem to pique President Obama like Fox News, wrote Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times in the summer of 2012, in the midst of that years presidential contest. Peters noted that Obama had taken to sometimes making jokes about Fox News to audiences on the campaign trail.

I think it lowers the office, Clemente of Fox News lamented about Obamas jabs. Four years later, Clemente would be among those pushed out of Fox News, along with Ailes and OReilly, as lawsuits and press reports depicted a workplace rife with sexual harassment, as well as enough political paranoia to give Richard M. Nixon pause.

As far as lowering the office, the right seems to have few qualms for treating press freedom with all the solicitude of a bloated despot in some forlorn post-Soviet backwater.

Unlike presidents before him, Trump doesnt criticize the press when he feels his policies have been misrepresented or maligned. Attacking the press is the central policy of his administration. In fact, it may the only one.

See more here:
When Obama Went to War on Fox News - Newsweek

In one of its first public statements since its launch, the Obama Foundation is issuing a call to examine the concept of digital citizenship.

Digital engagement and being a good digital citizen were focal points of the Obama Administration and it appears to be one of the early centers of interest for the former president in his private function as a global citizen.

Speaking earlier this year at the University of Chicago, the President touched on this theme, saying

[We] now have a situation in which everybodys listening to people who already agree with them. People are using social media and the global reach of the Internet to reinforc[e] their own realities, to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward, the former president said.

Now, his organization is issuing a call to start the conversation on how to improve our digital demeanors.

In a post to the Foundations Medium account, chief digital officer Glenn Otis Brown wrote:

These are big challenges, and the solutions arent self-evident. So, where to begin? We figure that the first step is simply to identify the problems and talk about them openly, together, via the very same channels that, when used without intention and awareness, help create the dysfunction in the first place.

Here are a few simple thought-starters. Respond through our site, share your thoughts on social media with #DigitalCitizen, or create your own original content and share it with us. Well update and expand on these over time feel free to pose your own questions back.

To get things moving, heres my response to the first question: A person who I think exemplifies online citizenship is Zeynep Tufecki. Zeynep takes care to explain complex technical issues to nontechnical people in an accessible way. She brings both her personal and professional experience to meaty topics of public interest particularly at the intersection of security, democracy, and technology without making or taking things personally. Shes an academic with a fierce practical streak. And even when being most emphatic, she does it with a sense of humor and humility.

Your turn. Write to us directly or drop a thought on the social channel of your choice. Add your voice.

Read the original post:
Obama Foundation issues a call for better digital citizenship - TechCrunch

Obamas third term? Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

In one of his first acts as commander-in-chief, Donald Trump ordered his top military advisers to conduct a 30-day review of Americas strategy for defeating ISIS.

Given that precise timeline and Trumps past promises that he actually had a secret plan for defeating the terrorist group ready to go one might have expected the White House to unveil its vision for combating ISIS in late February or early March.

But one would have been wrong. Five months passed before the president even indicated that a new strategy was imminent: On May 21, Trump announced that he would detail his administrations plan for defeating ISIS in about two weeks.

A little over two weeks later, the president revealed that his long-awaited plan was finally, truly almost ready and he would outline it at a news conference in two weeks.

Nearly a month later, were still waiting for that news conference.

One can imagine a whole host of reasons for Trumps procrastination. Perhaps, the administration has been distracted by the alarming developments in North Korea (and/or the special prosecutors office). Or maybe gaming out a plan for defeating as singular an enemy as the Islamic State simply takes a lot of time. Or, perhaps, the president just has little interest in telling the public what his military plans are, and says thats coming in two weeks to literally any policy proposal hes ever asked about.

But the Daily Beast suggests an alternative answer. The outlet notes that U.S. forces have removed 50 top ISIS leaders from the battlefield since Trump took office down from 80, in the last six months of Obamas tenure. Further, the militants killed on Trumps watch have generally been lower-ranking than those targeted by the previous administration.

These facts dont reflect the inferiority of the Trump administrations anti-ISIS strategy so much as the sufficiency of the strategy it inherited: The military is simply running out of high-value ISIS targets to kill. Under Obama, the U.S. military was effectively wiping out ISISs leadership.

Now, you cant kill a violent, anti-American ideology by dropping American bombs in the Middle East. And you cant prevent disaffected, psychologically damaged young men from seeking meaning in acts of spectacular violence. So lone-wolf terrorists provided Trump with plenty to demagogue about in 2016. But to the extent that sheer force can solve a problem like ISIS, the Obama administrations approach was working just fine:

Trumps changes to the campaign [against ISIS] so far have been tacticalnamely, giving the military more autonomy to strike, including special operators. But the effectiveness of the current Obama-era strategy of attacking ISIS via local forces together with allies calls into question whether theres a need for more dramatic revision.

Thats presented a dilemma for those working on the Trump anti-ISIS strategy and slowed its public unveiling, U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast. The White House has asked defense officials to come up with new ideas to help brand the Trump campaign as different from its predecessor, according to two U.S. officials and one senior administration official. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debates.

To review, the Trump administrations vision for fighting ISIS differs from its predecessors in two key ways:

1) This White House believes in giving greater autonomy to its military commanders, thereby enabling them to make the best tactical decisions, unencumbered by petty political concerns.

2) It also believes in asking its generals to alter their strategic plans, not because the administration doubts their military efficacy, but solely because it finds them difficult to brand.

Cant you just feel America being made safe again?

Some California legislators represent about 300 times as many people as some New Hampshire legislators. Does that violate the U.S. Constitution?

At an emergency meeting at the U.N., Nikki Haley said the U.S. will use military force if we must.

The White House reportedly asked the military for a new anti-ISIS plan because its first one was hard to brand as a break from Obama.

The government reportedly promised the White House cheering crowds for Trumps speech, and this is how it will deliver.

It was apparently buried by the owner of the old Danceteria nightclub in the 1980s.

Ending the Medicaid expansion will eliminate an estimated 1.2 million jobs. But the greatest jobs president God ever created doesnt seem to care.

The show set a new viewership record.

If he runs in 2020 much less in 2024 Bernie Sanders would be pushing the envelope on the maximum acceptable age of elected political leaders.

Paul Ryan: You have to remember the law is in what the actuaries tell us [is] a death spiral. Well, I happen to have some actuaries right here.

White House aides are apparently worried that Trump wont be ready to meet with the KGB agent turned strongman.

Stay in an attempt to influence a hostile administration, or go when your personal red line is crossed?

North Korea places a huge value on projecting itself as a Great Power that can deter its enemies. And thats true, whether or not it has nukes.

On July Fourth weekend, Senate Republicans either hid from their constituents or were showered in praise for not passing their health-care bill.

[T]he Senate health-care bill boils down to benefit cuts for the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Heavens!

Representative Clay Higgins, once known as the Cajun John Wayne, has a knack for courting national controversy.

Miosotis Familia was a 12-year veteran of the force.

The president tried to be a bit too inoffensive when referring to Karen Pence.

Pyongyangs first ICBM test doesnt leave the U.S. with great options and tweeting probably wont help.

Christie refused to apologize for the photos, saying, I think my poll numbers show that I dont care about optics.

This appears to be getting a little excessive.

Continued here:
Trump Rejected Military's ISIS Strategy Because It Was Too Similar to Obama's - New York Magazine