Mid-Week Post

The middle of the week in medias res...



The man who murdered nineteen people at a home for the disabled in Japan claimed he did so because it was "mercy-killing" to plunge knives into the most vulnerable members of society:

The suspect in a mass stabbing attack that left 19 people dead at a facility for the mentally disabled in Japan was being transferred Wednesday from a local police station to the prosecutor's office in Yokohama.

His head and shoulders covered with a blue jacket, 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu was led out of a police station in Sagamihara city and into the back of an unmarked white van with emergency lights on top. Photographers and video journalists swarmed the van as it pulled away.

Uematsu had been held at the police station all day and overnight after turning himself in about two hours after Tuesday's pre-dawn attack. He had earlier delivered a letter to Parliament outlining the bloody plan and saying all disabled people should be put to death.

Kanagawa prefectural authorities said Uematsu had left dead or injured nearly a third of the almost 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes. It is Japan's deadliest mass killing in decades. The fire department said 25 were wounded, 20 of them seriously.

Security camera footage played on TV news programs showed a man driving up in a black car and carrying several knives to the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in Sagamihara, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Tokyo. The man broke in by shattering a window at 2:10 a.m., according to a prefectural health official, and then set about slashing the patients' throats.

Sagamihara fire department official Kunio Takano said the attacker killed 10 women and nine men. The youngest was 19, the oldest 70.

Details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, were not immediately known. Kanagawa prefecture welfare division official Tatsuhisa Hirosue said many details weren't clear.

Uematsu had worked at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, which means mountain lily garden, from 2012 until February, when he was let go. He knew the staffing would be down to just a handful in the wee hours of the morning, Japanese media reports said.

The facility employs more than 200 people, including part-timers, with nine of them working the night of the attack, Hirosue said. All those killed were patients.

"They were working at night and were questioned by police after witnessing graphic violence, making them a little emotionally unstable now," he said.

In February, Uematsu tried to hand deliver a letter to Parliament's lower house speaker that revealed his dark turmoil. It demanded that all disabled people be put to death through "a world that allows for mercy killing," Kyodo news agency and TBS TV reported. The Parliament office also confirmed the letter.

Uematsu boasted in the letter that he had the ability to kill 470 disabled people in what he called was "a revolution," and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he will turn himself in. He also asked he be judged innocent on grounds of insanity, be given 500 million yen ($5 million) in aid and plastic surgery so he could lead a normal life afterward.

My God, if the man sat in the House of Commons, he could change the national anthem and get kill his grandparents for hospital beds.


Perhaps his thinking is too forward for this time.


Also:

According to the sources, he broke into the Tsukui Yamayuri En facility at around 2 a.m. Tuesday and sought to buy time by restraining members of staff with zip ties, causing a delay of about 40 minutes before the police could be alerted.

Uematsu told investigators that he “tied up” the staffers and made them hand him over keys to the parts of the building where the residents lived. The 19 victims were all found in the residential areas, which are divided into eight sectors that have self-locking doors. ...

Photographed while getting into the back seat of a car at Tsukui Police Station, Uematsu appeared to smile for the cameras.

The nine men and 10 women killed ranged in age from 19 to 70. Police have not disclosed their names on the grounds that their relatives do not wish to have them identified due to their disabilities.

(Sidebar: the real shame isn't having a disabled relative; it's pretending that he doesn't exist.)

Police believe Uematsu intended to commit murder. The attack was likely premeditated, taking advantage of his more than three years of working experience at the facility. ...

“People with disabilities who are most vulnerable should not be victimized like this,” said Toshiyuki Hokage, 29, who came to lay yellow flowers at the entrance. “I am worried that discrimination toward people with disabilities might spread after this incident.”

(Sidebar: too late for that, I'm afraid.)




Father Jacques Hamel was beheaded in the middle of Mass by an ISIS-supporting "restive youth" wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that (for some reason) was active between 8AM to 12:30 AM. This murderer also forced an elderly parishioner to film the entire brutal episode and his rant demanding that people convert or more would die.  The savage then slashed the elderly man. Two nuns were also attacked by this terrorist before being shot to death by the police.

Now - at what point will the French say: "Screw this! We're going to go Charles Martel on your @$$!"?

The late Father Hamel (lauded already for his martyrdom during the bloody sacrilege that ended him) worked on an inter-faith committee. Fat lot of good that did that goodly man. Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois' appeal to “overcome hatred that comes in their heart” is not helpful. The Church regards martyrdom as the ultimate witness to the Faith. It does not say that people should line up for it nor does it say do nothing in the face of persecution.

As these sorts of killings are no longer confined to countries where brown people live, perhaps those in the West can take a moment and review their history.

It might just save their lives.

Also during Europe's "summer of blood":

A suitcase filled with aerosol cans has exploded outside a reception centre for refugees in Germany.

**

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: “Following recent events in France, we are reiterating our protective security advice to Christian places of worship and have circulated specific advice today.

**

A GERMAN shopping centre has been evacuated tonight after a teenager with "links to terrorists" was spotted acting suspiciously.

** 

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack near Stuttgart, Germany after police discovered he had been in contact with the Munich shooter.

 


(Paws up)




In other news....


What? Not a recession, you say?

Harper dodged questions about whether Canada was in a recession after Statistics Canada said its real gross domestic product shrank during the first two quarters of 2015, and his finance minister, Joe Oliver, denied the label altogether. 

However, Harper and Oliver may feel vindicated after a study published by the right-leaning C.D. Howe Institute Tuesday said that the slump in oil prices that caused the economic contraction in the first half of that year was “not widespread enough to warrant a recessionary call.”

Don't worry. Canada will get its recession soon enough.




Oh, dear. Another broken election promise:

Canada has so far forked over more than $311 million to develop the F-35 — without any guarantee it will actually buy the multibillion-dollar stealth fighter.

The most recent instalment was made June 24, when the Liberal government quietly paid $32.9 million to the U.S. program office overseeing development of the warplane, despite having promised during last year's election campaign not to buy the F-35.

The contribution keeps Canada at the table as one of the nine partners in the project for the next year. Partners get a discount when purchasing the stealth fighter, and have access to billions of dollars in contracts associated with producing the plane.

Those potential industrial benefits are a big part of the reason why Canada continues to pay into the program, said Jordan Owens, a spokeswoman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan. The government says Canadian companies have secured US$812 million in contracts since Canada's first F-35 payment in 1997.

"New skills and technologies gained through access to the program have helped position Canadian industry to take advantage of other advanced aerospace and defence projects," Owens added in an email.

Being a partner, however, does not guarantee future work.

U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35, warned last month that future work would be directed to other countries if Canada chooses not to buy the stealth fighter.

Ontario - the province that keeps on losing:

By FAO calculations, Ontario’s debt, at almost $300 billion, has grown almost 90% since 2008-9 alone. The province has $2.40 in debt for every dollar of revenue it brings in. Ontario owed $20,806 per person in 2014-15, compared to $8,387 in British Columbia. Although Liberals argue they need public “investment” to promote growth, 56% of additional borrowing since 2009-10 went to financing the existing deficit, while just 26% went to capital spending.

A possible North Korean defection in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong police have stepped up security measures at the South Korean Consulate after a North Korean defector with a military background approached it recently seeking political asylum, local media reported Wednesday.

The consulate sought help from the local government, which has arranged for a police anti-terrorism squad to provide it with round-the-clock protection, the Apple Daily newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying.

Armed officers have set up surveillance posts in and around the commercial building that houses the consulate, located in the Central district, the report said.

Television broadcaster TVB said the North Korean entered Hong Kong legally.

China’s Foreign Ministry was reportedly notified of the issue.

Hong Kong police and South Korean consular officials had no comment, while a staffer who answered the phone at the North Korean Consulate said he was unaware of the report. “I don’t know,” he said before hanging up.

And:

The South Korean military said Wednesday that dozens of plastic bags containing North Korea’s propaganda leaflets were discovered in a river near Seoul.

An official of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said there have been previous cases in which North Korea sent such flyers to the South by air using balloons, but it is the first time they arrived via the Han River.

The official, while criticizing the act as a provocation aimed at causing confusion and division in South Korea, suggested that the North may have decided to use the river, as sending the leaflets by air has become difficult due to the summer south wind.

Ethnic Nuer women are raped by South Sudanese soldiers near the very UN camp they hoped would give them refuge:

South Sudanese government soldiers raped dozens of ethnic Nuer women and girls last week just outside a United Nations camp where they had sought protection from renewed fighting, and at least two died from their injuries, witnesses and civilian leaders said.

The rapes in the capital of Juba highlighted two persistent problems in the chaotic country engulfed by civil war: targeted ethnic violence and the reluctance by U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians.

At least one assault occurred as peacekeepers watched, witnesses told The Associated Press during a visit to the camp.

On July 17, two armed soldiers in uniform dragged away a woman who was less than a few hundred metres from the UN camp’s western gate while armed peacekeepers on foot, in an armoured vehicle and in a watchtower looked on. One witness estimated that 30 peacekeepers from Nepalese and Chinese battalions saw the incident.

“They were seeing it. Everyone was seeing it,” he said. “The woman was seriously screaming, quarreling and crying also, but there was no help. She was crying for help.” He and other witnesses interviewed insisted on speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals by soldiers if identified.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. mission, Shantal Persaud, did not dispute that rapes took place close to the camp. The mission has documented 120 cases of rape and sexual violence against civilians throughout Juba since the latest fighting began, she said Wednesday.

“The mission takes very seriously allegations of peacekeepers not rendering aid to civilians in distress and the UNMISS force command is looking into these allegations,” Persaud said.

(Sidebar: And nothing was done because...?)


It's time to withdraw from the UN.




Proof that council workers in Britain need to be air-lifted to North Korea and left there:

A senior employee at the British Council is being investigated after she allegedly made disparaging comments about toddler Prince George.

Angela Gibbins, the head of global estates at the charity, is said to have called the son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a “f****** d***head” who lived “on public money.

A Facebook comment under a picture of Prince George, allegedly written by Ms Gibbibs, read: “I know he’s only two years old, but Prince George already looks like a f****** d***head.”

The British Council, which promotes the UK and the English language in more than 100 countries, said her alleged comments, in which she also called the tot "royal, rich” and “advantaged” and referenced “white privilege”, were not representative of the organisation’s views. ...

(Sidebar: I think I see the problem here.) 

After being criticised by several Facebook users, Ms Gibbins is said to have responded: "I’m sound in my socialist, atheist and republican opinions.

(Sidebar: there you go.)

The problem isn't the monarchy (which the British will never get rid of). The problem is some useless mouth-breather who is damn lucky to suckle on public milk money attacked a three year-old child and expected others as useless as she is to pat her on the back for it. She must have been shocked (shocked!) that her vitriol did not get the applause she thought she deserved.




A lawsuit over side-effects of a cervical cancer vaccine by sixty-three women has been filed:

Sixty-three women and girls who reported side effects from cervical cancer vaccines sued the government and drugmakers on Wednesday as a sharp divide remained over the risks the medicine poses.

The plaintiffs, ranging in age from 15 to 22, filed suits in district courts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka, demanding compensation of at least ¥15 million each.

The plaintiffs say they experienced a wide range of health problems including headaches, fatigue and mobility impairment after receiving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines between 2010 and 2013.

The plaintiffs also are demanding the state set up a nationwide network of specialists to help them with their symptoms. They want it to subsidize research for finding a cure and to support victims as they seek to continue their educations and search for jobs.

The drugmakers involved are GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., who make the HPV vaccines Cervarix and Gardasil, respectively.

How many so-called professionals insisted that this vaccine was safe?

Oops.



And now, why fly when you can walk?