The plight of overworked Japanese employees was highlighted over the weekend when it emerged that a policeman had stabbed himself in the stomach and tried to make it look like an assault so that he could take time off work.
Tomoyuki Mukaide, an assistant inspector, had worked for two months without a break in the aftermath of an earthquake that struck Ishikawa prefecture in north-west Japan, on March 25.
Colleagues said Mr Mukaide, 44, had struggled to cope with the demands of assisting hundreds of people who had been injured in the quake and tens of thousands of others whose homes had been damaged. By the end of last month Mr Mukaide was at the end of his tether. He stabbed himself with a fruit knife at his home in nearby Kanazawa on May 23, but told police he had been attacked when he opened his front door to a stranger, sparking an investigation into attempted murder.
Investigators were immediately suspicious because he had waited an hour before reporting the incident. When they failed to find any other witnesses to the attack, Mr Mukaide admitted he had invented the story because he could not face going to work. "He became very busy, he felt like he couldn't handle the work he had to do, and that the work was weighing him down," a police spokesman was quoted as saying.
Mr Mukaide, who was released from hospital on May 31 after being treated for minor injuries, is being investigated for filing a false report.
A combination of long working hours and unsympathetic bosses is taking its toll on the health of a record number of Japanese workers. Last month, health officials reported that the number of employees who received compensation for mental health problems brought on by work-related stress rose to 205 last year, a jump of 65% from 2005.
The number of workers who committed suicide for similar reasons rose from 42 in 2005 to a record 65, the health ministry said.
Employees routinely complain that they are expected to put in unreasonable amounts of overtime, with many reluctant to go home before their colleagues for fear of being seen as lazy or disloyal. One study found that almost a third of men employed by private firms in Osaka and Tokyo worked more than 12 hours a day, yet only half were paid proper overtime. At least a quarter of Japanese men in their 30s work more than 60 hours a week, according to official figures.
Paris Hilton checked into a Los Angeles County jail to begin a three-week stay for violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. The 26-year-old heiress was booked late Sunday into the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, an industrial area about five miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, according to the sheriff's inmate locator Web site.
Though a judge sentenced her to 45 days behind bars, Hilton is expected to serve only 23 days because of a state law that requires shorter sentences for good behavior, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. Hilton surrendered to sheriff's deputies after making a surprise visit to the MTV Movie Awards in the afternoon.
"I am trying to be strong right now," she told reporters on the red carpet. "I'm ready to face my sentence. Even though this is a really hard time, I have my family, my friends and my fans to support me, and that's really helpful. I'm really scared but I'm ready to do this," she added. "And I hope that I'm an example to other young people."
Hilton will be housed in the "special needs" unit of the 13-year-old jail, separate from most of its 2,200 inmates. The unit contains 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates, Whitmore has said. She could have a cellmate. Like other inmates in the unit, Hilton will take her meals in her cell and will be allowed outside the 12-foot-by-8-foot space for at least an hour each day to shower, watch TV in the day room, participate in outdoor recreation or talk on the telephone. No cell phones or BlackBerrys are permitted in the facility, even for visitors.
"I did have a choice to go to a pay jail," Hilton said Sunday, without giving details. "But I declined because I feel like the media portrays me in a way that I'm not and that's why I wanted to go to county, to show that I can do it and I'm going to be treated like everyone else. I'm going to do the time, I'm going to do it the right way." I'd comment, but I just don't know where to start.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/04/2007 06:06 ||
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#1
I'd comment, but I just don't know where to start
Bobby: If it helps, here's what I do when I'm feeling overwhelmed:
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals, and labour activists in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and voiced complaints ranging from minor criticisms to calls for full-fledged democracy and the establishment of broader freedoms.
In Beijing, the resulting military crackdown on the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200300 (PRC government figures), to 400800 by The New York Times, and to 2,0003,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Thingy Cross), although the PRC government asserts and most independent observers agree that the majority of these deaths were not in the square itself but rather in the streets leading to the square.
Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government. Full article here.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/04/2007 10:44 ||
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"Just a word to let you know that I feel we are ready. We have had a very short time to train and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. I actually believe that under these conditions we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we will encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we dont, and the worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with all of us. Good luck, happy landings and GIVE EM HELL."
--Commander John C. Waldron, Torpedo Squadron 8, USS Hornet, June 4, 1942.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/04/2007 08:20 ||
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"Japanese carrier-based planes were reported headed for Midway the early morning of 4 June 1942. Hornet, York-town, and Enterprise launched strikes as the Japanese carriers struck their planes below to prepare for a second strike on Midway. Hornet dive bombers missed contact, but 15 planes comprising her Torpedo Squadron 8 found the enemy and pressed home their attacks. They were met by overwhelming fighter opposition about 8 miles from three enemy carriers and followed all the way in to be shot down one by one. Ens. George H. Gay, USNR, the only surviving pilot, reached the surface as his plane sank. He hid under a rubber seat cushion to avoid strafing and witness the greatest carrier battle in history."
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/04/2007 11:33 Comments ||
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#3
We still have men like Waldron in our military, and it's a darned good thing, too. We'll quite likely need them here at home soon.
Posted by: Mac ||
06/04/2007 18:47 Comments ||
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A PAKISTANI zoo is appealing for donations to help feed its sole elephant, Suzi, which gets angry and beats its keeper with a stick when its meals are late. "When Suzi is not fed on time it holds its master's cane in its trunk and starts beating him," an official at the zoo in the city of Lahore told the Daily Times.
The zoo was hoping philanthropists and schools would "adopt" Suzi and pay for its food, the paper said today. "We don't have enough funds to feed Suzi and its expenses are more than our budget," said zoo director Yousuf Pal.
#1
So, even muslim elephants have a sense of entitlement and get violent when they think they're Humiliated by not having their "due" immediatly? Wow.
From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.
The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out." But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window. "Duuuuude. They're, like, underpricing me by 10%, and that really harshes my mellow--and my profit margin."
They're known as gutter punks, these homeless kids with dirty dreadlocks and nose rings, lime-green mohawks and orange spray-painted faces, who panhandle with cardboard signs that riff on their lifestyles. "Tune in, turn on and drop out" "Please Help Us Get Un-Sober," one reads. Another: "Please Give Us Weed, Beer or Money." . . .
Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home. "I can't understand what's wrong with today's youth."
"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior." "Sure, we did pot and LSD and never bathed, but our music was 'way better. Who'd you rather listen to? Hendrix or Nine Inch Nails?"
Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, insists it is residents who need civilizing. "F------- squares! They sold out to the Man, man!"
"They say, 'Get a job!' " he said. "And I say, 'You got clothes for me? Or a place I can take a shower so I can look for work?' It's so bogus to tell me to get a job if I have nothing."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/04/2007 06:45 ||
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#1
This fine blog DEFINITIVELY needs an Acme irony-meter. Heh.
#7
Years ago, a Phoenix cartoonist named Bob Boze Bell did a funny one page for the Phx New Times, about "Punk Scouting". One cartoon showed a Punk Scout, and was captioned "Remember that when carving a hippie, you should always carve away from yourself."
#9
Oddly enough, they're emulating you, you hippie numbnuts.
Not really. Long before people became confused between unkempt nomads and actual hippies, a majority of the true hippies were focused on learning and peaceful coexistence. Yes, there were anarchist morons among them, but the level of intelligence was pretty decent.
Punks are nothing more than thugs. Their death obsession, readiness to commit violence, incredible self-abuse and abusiveness to others flies in the face of nearly everything that decent hippies once stood for.
Unfortunately for hippies, many others who were entirely without direction adopted the exact same guise and demeanor but were essentially unproductive bums. Liberal politics aside for a moment, these street bums gave hippies a bad name that persists until today.
The current crowd of punks are incredible losers whose sense of entitlement gives them no understanding of productivity or socially cohesive behavior. While people may have thought long hair was intentionally offensive, street punks take things well beyond this. Foul language, denigration of courtesy and polite manners, misogynism, racism, intentionally revolting appearance and general intolerance are their hallmarks.
While hippies may seem to have been their progenitors, street punks are the pinnacle achievement of the nihilistic philosophy that has been taught to our children for many decades. The "there is no right and wrong" and "truth is relative" crowd have delivered forth their ultimate triumph. Violent, self-destructive amoral thugs who absolutely refuse to integrate into society in any meaningful way.
#10
Man, what a bunch of symathetic comments there are here today. Why isn't ther more compassion towards the esteemed Mr. Evans? I mean, here he is after having squatted at the same place for 30 and 4 years, shouldn't he be entitled to little peace and tranquility in his golden years....?
/sarc off
#11
Foul language, denigration of courtesy and polite manners, misogynism, racism, intentionally revolting appearance and general intolerance are their hallmarks. ...
Violent, self-destructive amoral thugs who absolutely refuse to integrate into society in any meaningful way.
Sounds like A Clockwork Orange without the stylishness.
#1
Calling the FDA warning "unscientific, irresponsible and contradictory,"
This from a country who sent up their first spam-in-the-can astronaut almost a HALF-CENTURY after we did.
China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement posted on its Web site late Saturday that low levels of the chemical have been deemed safe for consumption.
"We feed our citizens antifreeze all of the time and only a few of them ever die from it. What's the big fuss with you guys?"
... monkfish that turned out to be toxic pufferfish
"Poison poison tasty fish!"
"Come on, pal! Fugu me!
... drug-laced frozen eel
You say anago, I say unagi, let's call the whole thing off!
juice made with unsafe color additives.
"Mmmmmmm ... day-glo irradiated fake juice!"
DEG was blamed for the deaths of 51 people in Panama after they took tainted cold medicine. China has admitted it was the source of the deadly chemical but insists it was originally labeled as for industrial use only.
"This tainted cough sylup was stlictry for the consumption of rathes and hydlauric stamping machines onry! Any idiots who imbibed it cannot have regar lecoulse against us. Am I creal?"
#2
Did anyone else expect anything different? The standard Chinese response is the same as the Clinton response: deny, deny, deny. They're trying not to lose face. They can't ever admit anything, because that would seem to hint that they were not infallible, and every Chinese knows that his country is the best in the world - criticism from outside, regardless of how legitimate it is, is not welcome.
And Zenster, Chinese don't confuse their r's and l's like that. The Japanese do. Please try not to be so muddle-headed in the future.
#4
g: And Zenster, Chinese don't confuse their r's and l's like that. The Japanese do. Please try not to be so muddle-headed in the future.
It's a little more esoteric. There is no L sound in Japanese. So many Japanese substitute the R sound for the L sound. Which means that "late" comes out sounding like "rate". Similarly, there is no R sound in Cantonese (who comprised most of the first Chinese immigrants to the US, and mostly spoke not a word of Mandarin, which has both R and L sounds). They substituted the L sound for the R sound. This means that when Cantonese immigrants pronounced the word "rice", it came out as "lice". Mandarin speakers don't have this problem - they have other ones.
#6
China just doesn't get it. If they want to send their crap into this country it must meet OUR standards, not theirs. It's called rules, and they seem to have a real problem with the concept. As if it's not enough that they break every clause of every trade agreement that they have ever made with us, send us poisoned pet food, and spy on us relentlessly.
#7
Get us the HELL out of China and their sphere of trade NOW,it'll be hard to do and take time, but if we dont want to get Phucked by these commie assholes we have no alternative.
Iran's interior minister has challenged a social taboo by urging the revival of the ancient Shia practice of temporary marriage to give young people easier legitimate access to sex. Moustafa Pourmohammadi, the minister, said the tradition, known as sigheh, should be promoted to offset a trend towards later marriage, which he said was depriving Iran's youth of sexual fulfilment.
The custom of sigheh, which allows couples to establish unions lasting from a few minutes to 99 years, is permitted under Shia Islam but has been likened in Iran to prostitution.
But Mr Pourmohammadi, a conservative cleric, described it as "God's rule" and said it was an acceptable alternative to pre-marital sex, which is forbidden under Islamic law.
"The increase in the marriage age in this country has caused many problems," he told a conference in the city of Qom. "Is it possible that Islam is indifferent to a 15-year-old youth into whom God has put lust? We have to find a solution to meet the sexual desire of the youth who have no possibility of marriage. Islam is a comprehensive and complete religion and has a solution for every behaviour and need, and temporary marriage is one of its solutions for the needs of the youth."
He called on religious schools to study the possible side effects of an increase in the practice.
Roughly half of Iran's 70 million people are under the age of 30. Increasing numbers are delaying marriage under monetary pressures, including rising inflation and house prices.
Mr Pourmohammadi's plea echoed a similar call in 1990 by Iran's president at the time, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who said temporary marriage was preferable to being "promiscuous like the westerners".
However, the idea has been attacked by women's groups. Rafat Bayat, a fundamentalist female MP, said the custom had to be strictly supervised and limited. "Do you accept, yourself, to tell to your daughter's suitor that your daughter has already made temporary marriage several times?" she asked Mr Pourmohammadi.
As it clashes with a cultural tradition favouring women being virgins until marriage, sigheh has been unpopular among Iranians. It allows Muslim men to have temporary marriages with non-Muslim women, but Muslim women can only have such relationships with co-religionists. Sigheh children are classed as legitimate. The custom is thought to have originated among pre-Islamic Arab tribes. The Prophet Mohammed recommended it to his companions and soldiers, though it was later banned under Sunni Islam.
#2
Maybe he's afraid all those horny young men who can't find jobs or wives will lose their faith. Hell, they might even take it out on the Mad Mullahs.
MONTPELIER, Vt. --At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers. But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States -- peacefully, of course.
Um, no.
Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism. They've published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union." They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March, eventually persuading the state Legislature to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.
We answered this question in 1865, and we're ready to answer it again if we must.
Whether it's likely is another question.
But the idea has found plenty of sympathetic ears in Vermont, a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.
Also a state where the record stores only sell vinyl.
About 300 people turned out for a 2005 secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.
"The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable -- it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.
"Congress and the executive branch are being run by the multinationals. We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war. If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."
Such movements have a long history. Key West, Fla., staged a mock secession from America in the 1980s. The Town of Killington, Vt., tried to break away and join New Hampshire in 2004, and Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas all have some form of secession organizations today.
The Vermont movement, which is being pushed by several different groups, has been bubbling up for years but has gained new traction in the wake of disenchantment over the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of the pro-secession groups.
While neither the Vermont Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution forbids secession per se, few think it's viable. "I always thought the Civil War settled that," said Russell Wheeler, a constitutional law expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "If Vermont had a powerful enough army and said, `We're leaving the union,' and the national government said, `No, you're not,' and they fought a war over it and Vermont won, then you could say Vermont proved the point. But that's not going to happen," he said.
For now, the would-be secessionists are hoping to draw enough support to get the question on Town Meeting Day agendas.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/04/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Well, let's see. How does Vermont stack up in the area of self-sufficiency?
How much oil refining capacity does it have?
How much power-generation does it have?
How much of it's food is raised in-state?
There are a lot of other questions like that, but these are enough to start. If Vermont is not protected by US trade laws, it would have to pay whatever its neighbors wanted to charge it for access.
#2
What's the big deal? Let them go. Let them figure out how to get gasoline for their Volvos and VW busses. Let them build their own powerplants for electricity.
#10
The total separation from the real world, even when it looks you right in the face. So, boys, how did New Orleans do without power, clean water, waste disposal, food, etc? How are you going to get along without the ever news worthy winter fuel oil? [insert heavy New England accent here] You can't get there from here.
#15
A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.
#16
Perhaps it would quiet things down if a few of the secessionists were jailed in federal prison (I'm thinking Colo. Supermax) for about 30 years. This is a dangerous idea, being made light of. It should be snuffed out altogether and immediately.
#17
This isn't the first time a secession movement has surfaced in Vermont. Back during the Louisianna Purchase all the Northeast states Maine, New Hampshire, Vermony, Massachusetts, Connecticut) threatened to secede if the deal was done. They backed down then. Maybe they shouldn't have.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/04/2007 12:13 Comments ||
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#18
I've got a feeling that if a question was put on the ballot to deport the massive influx of New Yorkers and Massholes back to their native lands from Vermont, it would pass in a landslide...
#21
Ummmm - didn't the U.S. settle this shit in 1865?
Just sayin'.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/04/2007 18:43 Comments ||
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#22
"nascent secession movement gains traction..."
hmm, working on our vocab, today, are we?
Posted by: Harry Glick8264 ||
06/04/2007 18:46 Comments ||
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#23
In the Soviet of Hawaii, the movement is native Hawaiians who want a return to the Royal Hawaiian gov't overthrown by American settlers around 1898. They call it the "Reinstated Hawaiian Gov't".... others call it the "Imaginary Hawaiian Gov't."
Posted by: Not Kamehameha ||
06/04/2007 18:51 Comments ||
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#24
Actually, it's kinda sad..... The Vermonters I grew up with would have ostracized/killed-and-eaten anyone with such crackpot ideas.... yuppies escaping Big East cities started flooding the state in the '70's and now it's beyond redemption short of a major ass-kick of an epiphany.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Paris Hilton checked into a Los Angeles County jail to begin a three-week stay for violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. The 26-year-old heiress was booked late Sunday into the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, an industrial area about five miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, according to the sheriff's inmate locator Web site.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals, and labour activists in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and voiced complaints ranging from minor criticisms to calls for full-fledged democracy and the establishment of broader freedoms.
From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.
Iran's interior minister has challenged a social taboo by urging the revival of the ancient Shia practice of temporary marriage to give young people easier legitimate access to sex. Moustafa Pourmohammadi, the minister, said the tradition, known as sigheh, should be promoted to offset a trend towards later marriage, which he said was depriving Iran's youth of sexual fulfilment.
MONTPELIER, Vt. --At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers. But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States -- peacefully, of course.
