Liberal Japan

A Japanese university student has been taken hostage by an armed group in Iran, but it is unclear who the kidnappers are or what they are demanding, Foreign Ministry officials said Thursday. (Asahi)

Here we go again. Let’s see what the media do with this. My guess is they are going to blame the student for being kidnapped.

You want a policy in place which encourages your people to travel to less developed nations, because this will help develop them. You don’t want a policy that discourages this.

If the government is required to spend an exorbitant amount of money to help someone who has problems overseas, this discourages the practice of traveling to countries like this. (At least puts the government and complicit media agents in the position of doing so.) If people are responsible for themselves, then no worries.

Japan sent (an unconstitutional) regiment of SDF forces to Iraq. On a benefit per cost measure, this operation was a grand failure. It cost so much to protect the SDF forces, that ultimately the water system they built would have been much cheaper had internal elements simply been hired to build it. That’s how politics work.

This horrifically expensive, unconstitutional SDF operation was praised by the media to quite some extent.

However, when three volunteers went to Iraq as private citizens to help Iraqis and were subsequently kidnapped, they were seen almost immediately as villains. The media really played up how those free individuals were creating problems for everyone in Japan. They were viewed as selfish and childish individuals.

Just remember, up is down, and down is up. Let’s see what happens in this new situation.