Tiresias comments

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Kujiranikusuki says "dont bash J-cops. They do their jop. And they do it well. Japan arrest rate for violent crimes is MORE than double of places like the USA!!! close to 90% if my memory serves me correct. There are a lot reasons to bash Japan. safety and police are not one of them!" Oh come on. 90% arrest rate does not mean they are catching the right people and a justice system so dependant on confession based convictions (especially a system with the death penalty) should alarm everyone.

a baby-faced college student who had traveled to Afghanistan with a group that seeks to promote interfaith understanding

He had an interesting way of promoting interfaith understanding, didn't he?

Insensitive location, wrong time makes this project inappropriate.

They should arrest the men who paid for sex with these underage girls as well as the pimp: no Johns, no prostitution. Law enforcement worldwide seems to have a problem with this concept, as those paying for sex are rarely arrested.

There is something really disturbing, though, about teenagers prostituting themselves to get cosmetic surgery and branded goods. There seems to have been a continuum for some years in some young Japanese women's activities ranging from "enjo kousai" to the "abunai shumi" where selling sexual activity to fund shopping seems to be acceptable.

The main points of this article are worth considering though, aren't they? Japan is not a homogenous country: customs and ways of doing things can differ widely; some long-term expatriates (in any country) can over-generalise about the country they are living in and make themselves into crashing bores in the process.

So the huge numbers of unsecured loans, the slashing of taxes on the super-rich and the massive amount of US government debt had nothing to do with the financial crash? Come on.

The majority of Liberals in America don't understand economics. The majority of neo-liberals don't either. Talking about pride in ignorance brings George W. Bush to mind.

“On such a decisive issue I think the safer response is not to ban anything. We should show respect for the tradition. It’s part of our culture,”

Eating people used to be part of some regions'culture too. Claiming that something is part of culture is too easily used as an excuse not to think about the implications of whatever that piece of culture is. Culture is not always a good thing. Well done, Catalunya.

Where will the Globalists (Libs) find their slaves now?

I'm betting Africa. China is all over the continent already.

The article romanises the book's title as “Tokyo no Kin’en Dekiru Resutoran,” Kin'en means "no smoking". 喫煙reads Kitsuen. This might help those desperate souls looking to buy the book!

People use mobile phones on trains in Ireland and Britain all the time bellowing out "I'm on the TRAIN" in nearly every conversation. It give gags to comedians, but no-one has talked about forbidding it. Considering the cachophony that is daily life in Japan -- announcements to mind your step leaving the train or bus; advertising of all kinds and right wing trucks, is has always seemed strange that phone conversations are taboo on public transport there. Sounds like the aggressor here was taking out other frustrations on his less than cooperative adversary who could have been killed.

Most air travel is still suspended in Ireland and the UK until 7pm GMT at least, but nobody seems to know for sure how long this is going to last. Planes are still able to fly west out of Ireland though. They say we may be having sunsets like the ones Turner painted for a while!

Well, if we are getting into linguistic correctness, the writer of the article wrote "Attractive as they are, these two “living museum” villages pedal an idealized, romantic notion of the past." Pedal is what you do on bicycles, what he means here is "peddle".

“It’s not a bishop’s fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible.” But it is a bishop's fault if he then moves the priest from parish to parish covering up his crimes and facilitiating him in the comission of more crimes against children. Further, in case after case, bishops did not report paedophile priests to the civil authorities. The current pope as archbishop of Munich seems to have participated in one such cover up and therefore bears historical responsibility. If the Catholic Church wants to regain credibility it has to face this issue head on, admit mistakes were made and change behaviour.

Garrido had a wife living with him while his victims lived in sheds in the back yard. What role did she have in this horror? Garrido is quoted as having said that he turned his life around. It is a pity that he didn't return this girl to her family as part of that.

The Question says: "I have no doubt in my mind that every country in every war since the concept of two nations fighting each other started have resorted to torture in one form or another. It's not personal, it comes with the business of achieving a tactical edge over the enemy. And hay, as far as we know nobody has been killed at GITMO (although four terrorists did commit suicide) which beats the heck out of the other side’s track record."

The US says it is fighting for democracy and the rule of law. So breaking not only international law as well as US law surely weakens every attempt to persuade. Torturing your enemies leads to bad intelligence (people will say anything to stop torture) and risks your own troops being tortured if they are captured. Torture does not make sense and is never justifiable.

The trouble was orchestrated by dissident republican groups who organised rioting by children too young to remember the killing of 20 and 30 years ago.

A slow news day in Shinjuku, evidently.

Where's Obama? Don't Iranians deserve Hope and Change? Iran, not to mention the rest of the troubled region, deserves better.

This implies that Obama rules the world, or that the US has a right or a responsibility to intervene in the affairs of every country whose actions displease it.

TravellingSales says: "I'm with the 80%. At least the capitally punished have a very low recidivissm rate." This presumes that the system is never wrong and that innocent people are never executed. Given the instances of false convictions in this story and doubts expressed in many states in the US about police investigations, the quality of court-appointed defence lawyers, it is obvious that innocent people have been executed. This fact alone makes the death penalty a bad idea, apart at all from studies that show that it does not deter people from committing violent crime. If the death penalty had been available in the UK during the 1970s, the Birmingham Six (who were innocent) would most certainly have hanged.

Beauty in Kyoto is well-hidden as stirfry says. Though Kyoto was not bombed during the War, 1960s Japan left a trail of concrete devastation.