The Jogan Tsunami is believed to have severely damaged the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region during the Heian period (794-1192). According to a previous study, traces of the damage were found from Miyagi Prefecture to Fukushima Prefecture. However, in the most recent study, the researchers found evidence of damage in Iwate Prefecture, leading them to believe the earthquake that caused the tsunami might have measured around a magnitude of 9, stronger than the magnitude 8.6 Hoei Earthquake of 1707, which was previously believed to have been the country’s strongest quake. (Yomiuri)
Okay, now given a quake like this could potentially strike Japan, at any time, let me ask this — are Japanese nuclear power plants ready?
“It’s contrary to society’s common sense to exchange information about how to commit suicide and crime through Web sites. When a situation involves a threat to human lives, it is necessary, in the sense of sending out a warning signal, to make people responsible for sites they set up, including the possibility of bringing criminal charges against them. Internet providers and search engine operators could be asked to make a much greater effort to delete harmful sites,” said lawyer Hisamichi Okamura, an expert in Internet problems. (Yomiuri)
If Internet providers are required to have a staff large enough to read every single line that is posted at one of the sites they host, they’d go bankrupt.
If someone discovers an Internet site promoting (for profit or otherwise) the harming of other humans beings, and if the site is serious in intent, there should be a legal method for shutting down the site. But the Internet provider should not be liable just because the site was hosted.
In the current situation, you have this utter creep who was offering to both kill people and assist others in suicide. Interestingly, his business model was based on getting cheap, prescription medicine and reselling it. This is often done in Japan and America with drugs such as Ritalin.
The law should be based on the concept of protecting individuals from other people, not themselves. If this had been the case, situations are much less likely to arise.
Okay, I’ll get to Ozawa in a minute but first let’s review some other neat quotes:
The internationalists may be naive enthusiasts, while the nationalists may often be bigoted and reactionary. But somewhere in this debate lie the core issues of governance in a globalizing and integrating planet.
– global policy.org
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.
– Walter Cronkite
The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to UN global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted or even influenced by an international body. This needs to be stated publicly more often. If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.
– Ron Paul
Okay, now here’s what Ozawa said, quite some time ago:
Under the current Constitution, it is possible to dispatch the SDF as a standby force in the service of the United Nations and allow it to engage in overseas operations. This is because such activities would be carried out under the supervision of the United Nations and thus would not constitute a sovereign right of the nation …
– Ichiro Ozawa (in his 1993 book)
Right. It’s okay to dispatch the SDF and have them kill a bunch of people, so long as they we’re doing it for the UN. Because after all, I mean, UN law takes precedence over Japanese law, right? I mean that’s sort of like the world law, while Japanese law is only for Japan, right?
I mean so long as the SDF are only following (UN) orders, it doesn’t matter what Japanese law says or what Japanese people think. All that should matter is whether the world as a whole approves, right? I mean, if the UN needs more soldiers, heck, as long as the world approves they could just come to Japan and grab ‘em up, right?
Ouch. Tilt! Processing error … need more data … need more data … melt down imminent … come back later.
The Liberal Democratic Party’s House of Representatives Gunma Constituency No. 4 branch, represented by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, received 6 million yen in donations prior to the 2003 and 2005 lower house elections from a company and its subsidiary that won public works project contracts, it has been learned. Under the Public Offices Election Law, lawmakers are not allowed to receive donations for national elections from companies that have won contracts from the government. …
In response, Fukuda said he knew nothing about how Fujita and its group company had won the contracts.
Of course not. How incredibly crass for someone to suggest a politician would know something about contributions received from a contractor who had previously gotten huge public work contracts.
An association of secondary emergency hospitals in Kobe that treat seriously ill patients has asked the Kobe municipal government to do something about patients who seek treatment because they are intoxicated, not because they are in need of emergency medical care, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Wednesday. … Of 12,689 patients who received medical examinations on holidays or during nighttime hours in August, 10,754, or about 85 percent, did not require hospitalization. Some reportedly used abusive language or stayed for long periods. In some cases, patients with minor illnesses refused to pay for their treatment, attacked doctors or demanded that the hospitals cover their taxi fares.
Suicide assistance sites such as the one Saito operated have become a social problem as they have been used to facilitate family and group suicides, and murder-suicides.
This is from a rather disturbing article. I believe that in a truly free society, then people should be free to end their own life. Yet when another assists them, then I fail to see how that can be other than murder.
It’s troubling that there are people out there who are looking to profit from the desire of some to take their own lives. Outright murder seems less reprehensible.
Wrestlers say they followed orders
Several sumo wrestlers who were allegedly involved in assaulting a 17-year-old junior wrestler the day before his death in June reportedly told investigators they had committed the acts under stablemaster Tokitsukaze’s instructions, police sources said.
Nova struggling to pay refunds, wages
Major English-conversation school operator Nova Corp. is struggling to pay refunds for prepaid lessons to students who canceled their contracts with the company midterm and has had difficulty paying employees’ salaries, according to sources. … According to Nova, the number of contracts canceled increased sharply after the Supreme Court ruled in April that the company’s unfair cancellation policy was illegal. Nova had 418,000 students as of March 31, but there were 7,880 cancellations between April and June, which cost the company 1.62 billion yen in total …. Nova has not paid salaries to 2,000 Japanese employees since July. About 5,000 foreign employees have not yet received their salaries for September. … A senior foreign teacher working in a Nova’s school in the Kinki region said, “An instructor I know has been asked to leave his apartment rented by Nova because the company has failed to pay the rent.” (Yomiuri)
The only real mystery here is what is keeping them going.
For useful news on Nova make sure to follow TPR and Let’s Japan.
A man indicted for stalking reportedly attached a Global Positioning System device to his target’s car and used a positional information service to monitor her actions and follow her, police said. Takao Yoshihara, a temporary worker from, Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, is charged with violating the Antistalking Law. He reportedly used the service to check his target’s location on several thousand occasions and regularly followed her to grocery stores and other places she visited, according to Azumino Police Station.
I wonder how they caught him. I also wonder where he attached the GPS device. I searched for the story in Japanese, but didn’t find any extra information.
