Heidi Standell comments

Oops I meant to say "Japan and the global community"!! blush

I agree with thepersoniamnow "Goddamit Im Japanese in my 30s, I don't have any recollection of war, but I DO feel sorry for people who were hurt as a normal human being would. What's wrong with a little humility and normal human decency? We should just bypass the suits and make a webpage that offers an honest apology to others. I'm sure millions of Japanese would sign it." I think any statement by any political leader of a supposedly democratic country who proposes to represent and to speak for an entire nation of people should gather his opinions not from academics and diplomats but from the entire nation of people! I do think all nations involved in that terrible war need to move "forward" -- no nation should be forever held accountable for what a past generation did. But as they say about the holocaust "never forget", for if we deny or erase the past no one will ever really move forward. Instead Japan and the global may someday resume the same horrid ethnocentric nationalist thinking that fostered colonialism and nationalistm, and wind up setting the world stage to repeat the same terrible atrocities that led to the death of innocent millions throughout the world.

I have to admit, I had high hopes for the "Arab Spring"...but now there seems more radicalism and violence than before. I'm frustrated with the political situation, nothing seems to help. I guess we could blame it all on American interference, but who really knows? The middle east needs to get itself out of turmoil and oppression and terrorism, no one else can do it for them, and this has been proven over and over again!!! Western and developed countries like Japan should just pull up stakes and keep our OWN citizens safe. We need to take all this money put into military action and support of these regimes, and put it towards developing our own resources as well as researching alternative power sources. It's terribly sad what has become of Islam, radicalized beyond comprehension in some places, and the awful violence perpetrated by these radicals on even their fellow Muslims and countrymen, but THEY have to put an end to the extremism and the religious based dictatorships that have suppressed all attempts to help, and almost demolished their systems of education and knowledge; they have only themselves to blame for pushing themselves back into anti-humanist medievalism.

It is only in the last 30 or so years in Canada domestic abuse of any kind began to be taken seriously -- "a man's home is his castle" is the old saying, so even if women wanted to leave there was no help available to them. And women were not innocent either. When my daughter was little we used to go to a pharmacy to fill prescriptions after dr visits, and they had a rack of cheap but colourful plastic toys, so one time she ran ahead of me and began taking things off the shelf. I put her on my lap and she was not happy about it -- anyway an older woman came up and told me "you should beat that child, she'll behave. My husband I did it to our sons and they are doctors and lawyers!" I bet her doctor and lawyer sons went on to beat their wives and children; these are real crimes and should be treated as such but perhaps change can only occur should MEN join in renouncing this as much as women's groups do! Men will know another man is violent but still happily work and drink with him, it is like there is an unspoken agreement among men to not speak of it.

I agree with Crimson and Clover. The headline is very sensational but then goes on to say they have called the season off, so the article needs some revision if it is to make sense. At any rate, if their research is really going to be "non-lethal" to determine whether commercial hunting is viable then I have no problem. If, however, they are going in order to confirm with a biased report what their country is willing to financially subsidise and the people are in favour of -- despite the fact that most of Japan doesn't even eat whale meat (!) then their research is just a cover for an inevitable hunt. Supporting something simply in the name of "tradition", particularly when the tradition contravenes a global agreement, means that the tradition is not only outmoded and archaic but needs to be abandoned.