> It's frustrating to try to interpret these stories with a lot of writing and video describing everything except the crucial detail about what the charges were for.
Is it really a crucial detail though? As someone having lived in Japan for a long time, I see no reason why we can not discuss the fact that civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking without resorting to "Do they deserve it in light of what they were suspected for?". I personally see no reason why suspects can not deserve decent sleep, meal, bedding, etc. even if they may be Shoko Asahara himself.
For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking
The main difference I see are that police can hold you for a much longer period before bringing you in front of a judge and the bail conditions. Regarding the specific detention conditions, they do not strike me as worse than American jails.
It is? Because the whole ‘is it awful’ thing hinges pretty strongly on how many options you were given to avoid it before going there.
If I had the police over, was an ass, had them come back, was an ass again. Then at some point they’re going to just think I’m the person that’d run away while they conduct their investigation.
I’m sure bad policemen exist in Japan, but all the ones I’ve met have been very friendly and reasonable.
> Literally the central trigger point of the story
The fact that you and other insist on this really gets at the crux of this whole problem. There are two notable positions on criminality and punishment: yours, which is broadly that the justice system exists, at least in part, to deliver righteous punishment on the deserving, and the position of those appalled by the treatment here, which is that the purpose of the justice system is primarily to protect people, and then to deliver predictable, proportionate punishment of those found guilty to disincentivize criminal behavior. If you think that torture of someone detained but not found guilty might be justifiable if they're accused of a sufficiently heinous crime then you have an illiberal position that can and will be used to enable abuse of the criminal justice system to inflict extralegal punishment on anyone for any reason.
I think this is even getting ahead of itself, since the story is writing that you can be treated this way without yet being charged. Not knowing if the author "deserves" it puts you in the shoes of the detainee in either case, since the detention comes before assigning guilt.
That is not my position at all and it’s dishonest to project it upon my writings.
I said this is an important detail to the story because it’s literally the central trigger point. For as many details as she’s willing to share, include admissions that could theoretically impact legal proceedings, excluding the core charge from the story raises suspicions about the trustworthiness of the narrator.
To be clear I do not support the treatment as reported. However the omission of this one key detail is a calculated omission by the author, where we’re supposed to both believe it’s entirely normal and benign but at the same time it’s also something that must be withheld from this story?
Sorry if it doesn't apply to you. I think that's how a lot of readers would categorize you based on the insistence that the crime was important, and why you were downvoted at the time of writing.
What claim are you talking about? The claim is that she was denied her rights.
What she did beforehand would only be relevant if it could somehow suspend those rights.
The argument for that being the case is that she doesn't say, therefore we can assume she did... something... that is sufficient to suspend her rights; without being able to name even an example.
For most people, the critique of Japan is because their own countries used to operate jails in this way.
So rationalizations of why it’s appropriate because the person was suspected of XYZ isn’t going to land with them and is largely irrelevant.
But I don’t mind playing devils advocate.
Should the justice system force confessions out of murderers? No, because they are only potential murderers and we have historically been able to get innocent parties to confess. People with vulnerability such as mental health problems are even more likely to give false confessions. The goal of requesting testimony should be honesty not compliance.
This logic applies as well the drug dealer, drug users, and jay walkers. It’s a moral principle disconnected from any specific geography so even if we are not Japanese and have no intention to interact with Japan, we can say they have not lived up to that principle.
I think there is a happy path though and she stuffed it up by not responding for a request for information while she went overseas as they were investigating the matter. When she returned they put her in detention as they deemed her a flight risk. I don't know what information they asked, but it would seem prudent to provide it or say you don't have it or you are overseas and cannot get it at the moment, rather than simply ignore it.
reasonable suspicion is a pretty well established concept. importing controlled substances would get an arrest warrant easily anywhere if law enforcement decides to pursue the case.
the administive pretrial detention is also pretty common, especially nowadays with the ICE craze.
nobody should be treated like this, agreed, but that doesn't mean that the process has no correlation to the level of guilt established and the certainty of it.
(the real problem is that it's way too many bullshit laws.)
I watched a little bit. She went overseas and the police asked for some information and she didn't respond. When she returned they deemed her a flight risk because she hadn't responded to the things they were asking.
Fair I suppose. I guess one can treat this either as a personal story (although frustratingly scattered across multiple places and incomplete) or as a description of a single instance of an arrest in Japan.
* All this story does it makes me want to avoid traveling to Japan. I don't fancy getting picked up for jay walking and tortured.*
Sure if you naively believe the hyperbole then don't go. Been 3 times, you'll know when you're in trouble, and you will have a chance to correct it before it goes further.
Infact according to her video she did have a chance, and she didn't bother.
It’s not and the reason you can’t have that conversation is that the people you are replying to are emotionally and cognitively in many respects children.
You can love Japanese culture and still call them out when they are clearly uncivilized. We're talking about a culture largely defined by the same people that did Nanjing. It's quite ironic that the same culture that claims to be pacifist has no problem inflicting psychological torture on prisoners. Asia in general has this problem.
Makes me think of TNG (Season 1, Episode 8). Death for walking on the grass.
The punishment should be harsher than the crime. Stealing an apple might not be a "big problem", but it sets a precedent that taking someone else's property is acceptable under some circumstances -- say, the relative value of said object.
Morals are relative. I happen to align with Japan's morals, and wish Norway would take inspiration from it. We're on the far opposite end of the spectrum.
Likely some sort of stimulant as you point out. It is hardly the first time either as there have been public cases like this numerous times over the last two decades. Some cases even ending with deportation. The one I remember most vividly was someone carrying an unlabeled bottle of ADHD medication that had been sent to them while they were in South Korea by their pharmacist mum in the US; that they then ran afoul of when entering Japan. Similarly, there was a case at the University of Tokyo in the 00s, where an overseas student got sent an (allegedly) unprompted package with cannabis (not a stimulant though) from friends abroad. Allegedly, they were expelled and we got university-wide, anti-drug campaigns with memorable slogans like: "Illicit drugs are illegal".
Due to their history, laws regarding stimulants are harsher in Japan than in many other places in the world [1] and this frequently takes people by surprise. Not that Japanese laws related to illegal drugs are lenient to begin with.
The Japanese have some wonderful programming along these lines. For preschoolers there is PythagoraSwitch (ピタゴラスイッチ) [1] which features amazing Rube Goldberg machines, geometric reasoning, algorithmic thinking, etc. Sadly, NHK loves to keep their programmes under lock and key, so I could not find anything to share other than the name.
Well, yeah, the first time they made a really big push technology-wise --- making TRON-OS the default OS for their entire educational system --- the US FTC prevailed upon the State Department to inform them that such an endeavour would be viewed as anti-competitive.
I really wish that such things would instead be shared and celebrated and translated.
I did wonder, reading such a comment, whether it would be a hyperbole, but not only is it documented, it is way worse than that. The free market is only ever enforced in the direction that suits the US, and the vassal states get screwed.
Yeah, the demo where they showed multiple videos being played in separate windows on an 80186 was _amazing_ --- I _really_ wish that using TRON-OS for desktop use on commodity hardware was well-documented --- in particular, it would be _awesome_ for an rPi.
> The free market is only ever enforced in the direction that suits the US
I mean, come on. If it was free in both directions, the US might lose sometimes!!
Sigh. It's so sad. Stuff like this is why free-marketeers (and in particular libertarians) earn my ire. There is not a single economy in the world that is an actually free market. Capital can move fairly freely and labor not at all.
The list price appears to be ~USD 380, which is still a hefty saving compared to what they charge for the US model. There are of course software and hardware differences [3], but if it is primarily the hardware you are interested in, I see no reason not to at least consider importing one.
> I think the record was 5 million tons of bombs over Vietnam (170 kg of bombs per capita), still the collapse didn't happen.
Unsure about the tonnage, but the parallels to current events [1] and the illusion that a bombing campaign will suffice to end a war in a matter of weeks is rather eerie to me.
Always fun to read jcs@'s write ups. I am seriously tempted to look into getting one of these as light, fanless alternatives to run OpenBSB on the move are few and far between. My current main laptop is not big at 11", but it clocks in at ~1.7kg and that makes you reluctant to carry it around everywhere.
Main downsides with the DM250 seems to be that you need a USB-C dongle for audio (they are tiny though) and that you can not hook it up to an external screen for better ergonomics and presentations. Still, small, means compromises are necessary, and I do not think the external screen is a deal break if one would consider the DM250 as a daily commute driver.
It is an utterly amazing collection, although not the era I am the most familiar with. However, let me add a few as I love your initiative and went through them all and skimmed the ones below to get a sense of the quality.
Many thanks for all the code! The second hand market is currently flooded with Wii U hardware that is cheap enough to buy enough stock to last a life time for peanuts. Would be amazing fun for PowerPC development and if I had an alternative timeline where I went into low-level programming, I would love to push for OpenBSD support inspired by your work.
Is it really a crucial detail though? As someone having lived in Japan for a long time, I see no reason why we can not discuss the fact that civil rights and detention treatment in Japan are lacking without resorting to "Do they deserve it in light of what they were suspected for?". I personally see no reason why suspects can not deserve decent sleep, meal, bedding, etc. even if they may be Shoko Asahara himself.
For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to.
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